Document text
F. tragyton
Ve Nxit Urlters' Project
Veriuit 4
nTlw
L. 'Awls
Ur,
"I don't care much for paper work.
A hard -muscled Irish stonecutter had spoken. lie looked
at the gray granite walls and golden dome of the Vermont
State !louse, at the smooth green lawns and tall lazy elms
surrounding it. !lore in the shadows of high granite eolumms
in the Doric Portico, behind which the sovereigsty of the
people of the State voiced its demecraey every two years,
this :Ian bad, in a few wards spoken in eels decree, put mid
die class culture an the spot. To this Vermont Irishmafi,
who produced his work in everlasting stone like the artists
of ancient none, Creep*, Babylon, an4 Egypt, the middle class
workers of 4.merica, straining at mountains and bringing forth
only little -cratChes on thin paper, were the boondogglers of
culture.
vibereas ancient cultures used stone for arenas, public
baths, official buildings, and decorative statuary designed
for centuries of use by the living, modern culture uses stone
sparingly in Ito public buildings and lavishly only to nark
grounds where lie the dead.
Stone is Vermont's chief Indus -47, both in value of pro-
ducts and number of workers employed, and has been for over
forty years. Production by cubic feet In the lnited states
in recent years has ehown three times as much dimension build.'
Inc. stone as monumental stone, though the value of the latter
may exceed the former because of the greater labor -time value
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in momumantal stone. In Vermont the 'able and volume of moon.
mental stone exceeds those of building stone. imports and
exports of dimension stone to and from foreign countries
about balsam, and represent but a very small percentage of
total domestic production.
echnological improvements have been mode constant4s
and, indeed, the making of stone working machinery hes also
been a ma4or industry in Vermont. Meprovements ars Wine
node today, yet despite a buil degree of mechanisation oom.
pared to its crude beginnings, the most important agent. in
the stone industry is still the labor of nano A visitor at
the sheds in Darr* pertinently commented that granite work*
in was picturesquely like a medieval craft Shop. Perhaps
it was the unconscious association of stone cutting with
the remains of the vorldls oldest civilisations that brought
the picture to mind. Perhaps it was the individual reopen.
ability, neat craftsmanship, and absence of the assembly
line But ancient stone womking was done largely by slaves;
and these steel-sineved ion are not slave*. That is not
the slaves atom welted backs tell the story of their ex.
ploitation
in the more than a hundred years that stone has been
removed from Vermont earth to be molded to the needs of men,
nany changes, have taken plebe. Scattered over the Green
Mountains that run north and south through the center of
the State, the Taconic Mountains, running north and south
along thc southwestern border, and the valleys between,
are the empty quarries of discarded elate, granite and marble,
Competition, substitutes and depressions hove concentrated
quarrying in thee* deposits yielding the best quality of stone
at the most profitable operation, There are 000esianaly
lated quarry boles whore the deposit has been exhausted. Beek
off the main roads these abandoned quarries are quietly being
reclaimed by persistent Nature. The holes fill in eith spring
water that seeps throudh the galls. Grass and bushes venture
nearer and nearer the former paths of laboring men Discarded
machinery lice rusting; buildings fall, railway tracks piglet
through the long grass. A2I is quiet, save the seeimmmts and
gouge of birds in the young trees, and the desultory croak of
frogs in hiding near the water.
Ocoee/ovally, riding along Vermont's main highways, one
may sea the 'Mite gashes in the mountain sides, or an the
plains, where generations of quarrying have seaumulated hogs
piles of waste stone. The slate motion, in the towns of
Pair raven, Poultney, Oastleton, Pawlet, and till*, on the
southwestern border in the Taeonic Mountains, is easily
identified by Immense dark gray piles of mete slate. In
the marble section of the lover Green tiatains and the val-
ley of Otter Creek, in the towns of Denby, Dorset, Uest Rut-
land, Proctor Pittsford and nrandon„ marble waste piles
loom high and *lite in the sun. In the northwestern part
of the State along the shores of Lake Champlain, in the
tome of St. Albans and Swanton, are quarries of red dolomite,
called marble in the trade, so colored by the iron oxide typi.
cal of nany of the Lower Cambrian reeks in the Lake lumnplain
region.
Bost of the granite is now quarried in what is called
the "Barre Area." This includes Lame and a few adjolning
towns set aside by agreement of quarrymen, and so named to
prevent outside granite of inferior quality being advertised
as "Barre" granite. Though first quarried on Cobble Hill,
in Dame Town, meet production now centers around Millstone
Hill nearby. Here, a thousand feet above Barre City, in the
north central part of the Green Mountains, the top of Uill.
stone Hill has literally been laid open, and a steady stream
of granite blocks go down the steep winding road by trucks,
or by the matchbook railroad.
iathough there are talc, asbestos and other quarrying
or mining enterprises throughout the State, the above three
contribute by far the most to Vermont's income from quarrying.
Granite
Barre, the most cosmopolitan of Vermont's cities, has a
population (1930) of about 11,000. It is situated in a valley
of the Stevens and Jail Drenches of the V4nooeki River. Lining
the long and busy Lain Street are stores, office buildings,
and apartment blocks, punctuated here and there by a Colonial
residence, hard pressed for space. Parallel to in Street
on the southwest side, alon, the banks of Stevens 4Vanch„ are
long rows of gray, gloomy and noisy granite sheds, where non
of all nationalities work into thousands of forms one of the
hardest comron stones in the world. Throe largo machine 'Plants
nsking stone working tools and machinery are located in Barre,
where equipment from hoists to small pneumatic drills AMC
shipped all over the world. Barre, then, is a one industry
town, and that a highly specialised one.
000n after the War of 1812, granite was quarried at
Cobble 7111 for millstones, doorsteps, bitching posts, windows
lintels, and fireplace mantels. From here, and from rillstone
Hill, granite was taken by ox.team in 18,354 for the construe..
tion of the Capitol building at Vontpeller. Quarrying on Iill
stale Hills so named from the use to which early granite was
put, has, then, been continuous for over one hundred years.
Granite quarrying around Lowell and Quincy, Lassachnsetts„
had been going on for several generations prior to the opening
of Vermont quarries. King's Chapel in Eoston was the first
public building in America to be constructed mainly of granite.
The rocks werc crudely broken to size by building rows of fires
atop them and dropping cannon balls an the line. 'Early German
immigrants to Quincy introduced the use of blasting powder.
Some years later an American named Tarbox introduced the drill
and wedge for breaking stone. Solomon Willard Chose Quincy
dark granite for Bunker Hill Monument. It is interesting to
find that the first railroad in ,bnorica was built in 182C to
carry blocks of granite from Quincy quarries to tidewater.
7orses provided the motive 'rower.
The -assachusetto industry thus early gave not only in.'
petus to the use of granite as a building stone, but practical
methods of quarryinv und cutting it.
6
The first derricks were operated by oxen treading around
a sweep. Hoisting was at the rate of fifty or sixty test an
hour. The use of drills and wedges was extended until men
were at last driving tumors six to twelve feet long into
the hard atone*
However, the use of granite, either as a building or a
memmmentel stone, progressed slowly 111 the opening of the
railroad to the Barre Quarries in 41T6. The railroad when
oompleted ran twenty-six miles back and forth across the hills,
usinc switchbacks to cover the four miles and 1,000-fect rise
above the city of Barre.
For the next thirty years Barre boomed with expansion
and prosperity. The population rose from a static 2,060 in
1880 to 6,812 in 1890. In the seventeen years ending with
1897 hones were erected at an average rate of one a week.
1097 there mere seventy-five operators employing 1,000 men,
and fifty-six trains left or entered the Barre depot every
deg?'
In those early days stone was shipped to Quincy, Uassachu.,
setts, for finishing, that place having already an established
reputation as a granite center. In 1881 there were barely
half a dozen finishing plants in Lame, and but fifty cutters
working in them. By 1807 therc were 1,500 cutters employed.
From the start the onOropronour, of granite were the
worker° themselves thrifty cutters and quarry workers who
race from employees to employers. J. E. i;albridge„ writing
in 1007, said of these industrialicts "Tba term capitalist
and laborer are a misfit as applied to Barre, for there the
capitalist is a laborer and the laborer expects soon to be-
come a capitalist.'
In the quarrying end of the industry consolidations and
associations in ownership have now been made an the number
of quarry owners is reduced to seven. Tie eighty owners of
the finishing plants in Darre City were almost without exi.
*option scotch, Swedish, and Italian immigrants or their
descendants. Lven here, however, the trend at present points
to capitalistic ownership, with more plants cowing mama
single or interlocking directorates. One company now operats,
Inc both quarries and plants is formed with thirteen directors,
of whom u Vermont Senator in Washington, is one, and of whom
but two live in Larre
In 1037 nearly the entire burrs Pte production was
for monumental use, and this production was over twenty time.
the Quincy, Massachusetts, production. In 1936 the value of
quarry output was over 2100000,0101111, and the value of the stone
finished into memorials nearly C6,000,000.
Granite is now cut out of the hills in more or loss
stock sises, and to sixes ordered from Lame. roles are
drilled into the stone by compressed air drills to the res.
quired depth .0 up to six feet or more. The stone between the
boles is broken out with a flat broach. Granite is quarried
in open pits, many of which are nearly 300 feet deep. Alone
the brim and down in the pit is a network of boom derricks,
and railway trucks run to the quarry's edge after the large
stones are taken to the earfuls, they are cut to dimension by
jackhammer runner. Operettas ocepressedviaskhammere, Who
split the rock along its grain by inserting plugs and feathers
wedges into the hammer holes, and striking them in rota*
tion with heavy hammers.
In BQPrO there are mills that saw the granite to siva.
Long smooth steel blades in a gang.frame swing back and forth
over the granite, and under the blade a steady stream of water
and steel shot plays as an abrasive, at one plant a swiftlY,
revotvinc circular saw slowly cuts into a ear loaded with
atone and fed toward the saw. This also usea steel shot and
eater the shot for abrasion, the water for cooling. Small
carborundum saws are used us edgers and bevelere.
Polishing is done by setting the stones into beds and
running a bugs flat steel polishing wheel, some weighing a
ton, over the surface, Bere Shot, granulated earborumdum4
or tin oxide are used as abrasives, and for high polish a
felt buffer is used. A new process for mirror polish recent.
ly developed in Aberdeen, ':;cotland, uses five different opema.
time; the fourth operation calling for iron oxide rouge
as the abresive.
Surfacingmechimes and carving tools are operated by
compressed air kept at from ninety to one hundred pounds
pressure. Overhead immense travelling cranes rutse and lower
the stones at any designated place in the shed. At one end
a blacksmith pounds red hot steel tools back into shape. At
the other end huge electric motors run air compressors. Off
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the yard is the box..1.110=seatreies. are boxed and marked
for shipment.letuismery quarter comes a terrific din, making
conversation next to impossible, as hard steel slowly pounds
away at hard stone. The air is misty with dust the dust
that causes silicosis and sends granite workers to an early
If the building of the railroad to Millstone Hill gave
impetus to the quarrying of stone, the influx of Scotch,
Italian, Swedish and Spaeoh immigrants. Who had learned
stone carving in the Old country and had came to.Amerioa
along with the great unskilled in those forty years from
1800 to 1920, supplied the impetus to the finishing and car..
vine of stone which began at Barre City after 1885.
The granite workers of Aberdeen, Sootlandj the marble
workers from Carrara, Italy; the i it. workers of Gote-
borg. Sweden, and of Saragossa Spain, have come to the
shores of Americo and settled, to continue their trades in
the eastern stone centers. Ones familiar with new America,
they have migrated to stone working centers all over the
country, and are almost as restless as the FrenchwCanadian
textile workers. Most of them have come to LarTO from other
get England or southern quarries and plants. The scotch and
Italian workers same in the greatest numbers. Between 1600
and 1690, 008 Scotch and 92 Italians became residents in
Vashington County Which would include beside Barre, the
three towns of waterbury, rast Vontpolier and Northfield,
where granite mmnufacturing plants are located. In the
10.
following decode the number increased to 1,109 Sooteh and
990 Italian, and the third &leads later to 1,634 Scotdh and
2,159 /talons. The Swedes were numbered at slightly over
300 by 1910, The Spanish workers oame to ':;aChington CouutY
in the three deosdee between 1000 and 1950, numbering 073 in
1920.
Hundreds of French.Canadians have ocme to Barre, partisu•
lazily during and since the lookout of 1922. During that year
the quarry owners instituted a lookout and brought back from
the Province of Quebec train loads of poverty-stricken Frenebo.
Canadian farmers as strike breakers. They narebed the men
up Min Street, with bands and American flags frantically ae
serting the utmost patriotism. Immense boarding houses were
built at the quarry, and here the Canadians ewe housed slab
MINEOICIEMIlelline and Sunday dinners of chicken and Lew.
cream served free by the quarry ouners, who finally broke
union demands. This lockout of 1922 was the Barre chapter
of a country -wide movement of Chambers of Commerce, Trude
Associations and Mannreeturersi Associations to install the
open shop in every business enterprise in America the Liberty
League of the post war period and called, with the customary
oatchpenny Jingoism of profit and loss patriotism, The American
Plan. It has taken Lorre unionlimayears to recover from this
blow and there are still men who have not worked a day in
the granite industry since the 1922 lockout.
In other ways, as in this, the history of Barrels organi-
sation of labor follows country -wide trends. Quarry workers
were first organised in 1877, resolved their charter from the
A. F. L. Sept. 04 1003, and at the present time have dharters
from both the C. I. 0. and the A. F. L Barre is the inter".
motional office of the Quarry Workers' Internatienal Union
of North Amerisa0.vbidh organises the quarry workers and a
few classifications in the finishine plants. Quincy, Mass.
is the international headquarters of the Granite Cutters'
International Association of America which organises the ree.
mining finishing plant workers. Though Barre is highly or'',
goateed by both uniene„ granite and stone.working centers in
general throughout the country bees only a minor percentage
of unionisation, and as a consequence Barre sets the national
pace in union standards. The unions are the strongest agency
uniting in a common interest the many nationalities of Barre.
They have been able to obtain for the granite workers a rela.
tively high sage scale. This scale ranges from 69 cents an
hour to t1.00• an hour. Before the sandblast was used for
carving, experienced carvers earned up to .:',26.00 a day.
These men, many of them from northern Italy, had studied
six to twelve years with native artists and sculptors before
coming to America. Of these there are but a handful left
since the sand -blast„ the draftsman and the stock design have
taken over their work.
Though for a few workers there is employment the year
round, for by far the most there are lay-offs, so that,
though Vermont granite workers are amenc the highest paid
in the country, their yearly income is estimated by some
sources at about $900.
On the other hand, the manufacturers and quarrymen are
equally well organised, so that, though practically every es-
tabliahment is now owned, or was began, by nen once workmen
themselves, they are now set off in the.emplOyers' oamp by
membership in the various associations a eireumetance that,
it nuet be said, works ageinst the active sympathies of many
of the shed owners, some of whom have betrayed their fellow
members by quickly granting organised labor °caplets coopers.
tion. The most prominent of these employer organisations ax's
the Barre Clearing House, the Barre Granite Manufacturer,'
g4)
Association, the Barre Quarriee Cooperaties, the Memorial Em.
A
tension institute, and the associated industries of Vermont.
Thr lively spirit that pervades Barre is truly a ,ftEin
laNasahre' ror over the heads of all the workers employed in
the rranite sheds hams the persistent menace of premature
death from silicosis* Granite dust, floating in the air they
breathe, is crystalline, and cuts and clogs the lung tissue
till the congestion becomes too great* The men all knew,
even when they werc boys, that if they undertook to spend
their days working in this powder -soaked air they would die
of "stonecutter's consumption." They are long hardened to
this fate and gaily they drink their wine, spend their
money, dance their dances, and slap their ,hambini„ for to-
morrow they will die. If they have been only a little frugal
they will have saved enough money for one of those enduring
monuments, the making of which has brought them their living
13.
and their death.
sills introduced to provide for proper dust -removing
equipment have been killed year after year. Some emnufacturers
voluntarily installed tme equipment. Others balked. Finally,
the unions wrote' into their last contract a dust -removing
clause, and equipment is now being installed for piping *My
the dust by vacuum from every stonecutting machine in the
plant.
But even these machines do not take away all the dust.
Finer powder still settles over the galls, over the stones
and machines, on to the clothes of the wafters.
Down the long shed each man slowly worts over his stone.
near the °enter a group of three men are setting stones in a
pollehing bed. Even through the roar of this place the high-
pitehed ear -shattering grind of the circular saw penetrates.
In the fur corner of the carving roam Mario Poletti
carves carefully, high up an a staging, finishing the statue
of a saint pointing, hand high with promise, toward heaven.
/t has been a long time since Mario has done carving like
this. llodern memorials arc simpler less expensive. Care-
fully he plays his carvinc; tool around the last unfinidhed
piece the thin finger of that uplifted hand. nlowly little
chips of granite fall away, and slowly the finger emerges.
ruddenly San 4ntonio I- the staging has slipped. Mario
grasps the cold Santa naria for support. !as carving tool
hits the finger and st-t off it cement
Tio„ ,xturol Cantu :Aria he has no
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finger lett
The three of them stare at the hand. Mario is right.
She has no finger. Mario leaps to the ground. They smith
behind the mommment. There lies the finger in the red wet
dirt. Mario pounces upon it. Eh bane& It is at least whole.
They sit down an the edge of a stone. Merlotti fat fa ee is
very puzzled. .Thousands of dollars are in that stone. Now
the Santa has no finger to point the way to heaven. Arturo
starts to laugh. Pietro starts to laugh. Mario glowers at
them. Suddenly his face lights with hope. He grins. Pietro,
get the dope. Pietro runs to the sand -blast room and comes
back with a pall of cement. Once before Mario had to run
for the dope, and it worked. He leaps upon the staging,
clutching pall and finger. He laughs. The boss will never
know. In a minute he jumps down High up is the finger,
seet Again it points to beavenl
Ulthout a word they put on their bats and ooats and
grab their lunch pails They leave the shed by a side door
and stalk over to 7.ir liols on Main Street. They sit at a
table. Not Chianti or Manes() or Toecania, but, indeed,
three red wines for laugbinr Arturo, Mario and Pietro. The
cards,
The rest of the afternoon and into the eveninr they
played rummy and drunk wine and laughed beoause the Santa
had a sore finger, but at last ,.rturo rose to go. His
wife was cooking a very grand dinner tonight for eight at
those young people from Montpelier who liked to eat good
Italian spaghetti with meat sauce 000ked all day lonc slowly,
and big antiwpasto salads, and sometimes obtain csociatore.
HA had better be he to eat before those hungry people Should
come and his wife give them all of it.
But tomorrow morning at seven -thirty they would be beck
in the shed, the broken finger would be so34Aly mended, and
no one would ever know what deep anxiety it had once caused
to Arturo and Iletro and rario.
Marble
marble is a softer stone than granite.' Sixty color
varieties are quarried in Vermont, from the abite etatuary
marble of Brandon and the green-and...bite and gray-and.white
veined of the Rutland area, to the dark red of the sowcalled
Swanton marbles. The latter are really hard dolomite, and
are quarried now only on special order. The Rutland marbles
are metamorphoeed a tone, and from the oaloarecus nature
of the stone the dust is not injurious to the workers as is
the dust cf granite.
Many of the quarries
down two or three hundred
crock at Vest Rutland; or
O. mountain, as at Danby.
The first marble quarry opened in Dorset by Isaac
Underhill. In 1790 Jeremiah Sheldon opened a quarry twenty..
five miles north in the town of Pittsford. In 1004 Then W.
Judd of !liddlebury opened a mill for sawing marble, using
sand and water as abrasives under moving iron plates, after
are really mime, going straight
feet as on the plains of the Otter
hundreds of feet into the side of
16,
an ancient at method described in ancient time* Or
From /ao4 on, sat mills sprang up in many parts of Rut..
land County. These were operated by water power, and the
saws were built in games of multiple &QM stretched parallel
in a frame.
At first marble vas used for grave markers, Chimney backs,
hearthstones, lintels, awl fire jambs. In 1036 the IT. n. Bank
at Trio, Pennsylvania, was built of marble, and from then an
nurble was used extensively for building construction, ,By
1340 there were sixteen companies in the business of quarry,.
inc., marble, though none of them appeared overburdenod with
prosperity.
In the fall of 1049 when the Rutland and Ilaitehall Hail...
road wac opened, connectinr the marble country to a port on
the Champlain Canal, the problem of long-haulinc was solved,
and markets in the test were opened to Rutland stone.
Lls early as 1032 the Deneral AsseMbly of the state
recognized its duty toward the marble men, in that year pass-
ing a resolution exhorting their representatives in 1:ashIng
ton "to use all honorable means to procure the passage of a
law whith shall effectually protect our citiseme engagod in
the nunufacture of marble from foreign competition," The
more we change the more we are the same.
By 1300 the industry was eupportin thirty-three companies,
and outside capital was bein- attracted to the marble business
us it was to the mininc industries opening in the Far ;Amt.
17.
Flymbymnight stock companies were organised in Philadelphia,
Boston and New York, selling shares in Vermont marble enter
prises. Eventually met of them went bankrupt.
In 1069 Redfield Proctor, a lawyer of Rutland, vas apm
pointed receiver for the Dorr and Myers business, and in
November, 1070, he reorgenisW the Sutherland Falls Marble
Company of Proctor, suppliers of marble for the Dorr and
Myers Company. By 1880 this company was free of debt and
proeperinc. Vnlike the Barre owners, who had served an
apprentioeship in the business they later managed, Proctor
had no experience in the marble business. But he did have
organising ability, boundless energy, knowledge of the law,
and ruthless practicability.
In 1800 be combined the Rutland Isarble Company and the
Sutherland Falls Narble Company into the Vermont Marble
Company. In 1863 he persuaded nearly all the marble eamm
panicle in the area to coMbine in an association called the
Producers' Marble Company, a se inr organisation set up
to control pricemouttinc and af:eney problems, and other comm
petitive activities. The association was lirAted to a life
of five years, and after its expiration Procter was able to
acquire, one after another, meet of the larger companies.
Today the Vermont r,arble Company does by far the lion's
share of marble business in Vermont, has quarries in Alaska,
Colorado, and other states, and in good years has shipped
a million cubic feet of marble and employed 2,600 workers.
Organised vertically, the Vermont Marble Company deans
18.
quarries, saw mills, plants, branch offices, timber lands.
For years it operated a company store, but finally sold it.
It owns hundreds of company houses, although, since the
strike of 1936 with the subsequent publicity, it has mild
many to workers. It has its own foundry. Channeling machines,
patented by other companies, are copied part for part without
infringement of copyright, since the machines are not sold;
this can be done for around four thousand dollars, three
thousand five hundred dollars less than the patent -holders'
selling price.
In seventy years of operation the Vermont Marble Company,
dealing in both building and monumental marble, has accumulated
assets of over ten million dollars, and the Proctor family
boasts of millionaires, which Barre granite has yet to produce.
After ten years of calamitous depression, the Marble Company
has today a ratio of current assets to current liabilities
of twenty -to -one. A conservative bank rates well any company
showing this ratio at two -to -one, so the Vermont Marble Company
is a good risk ten times over.
The two towns of West Rutland and Proctor are company
towns formed by the marble interests in 1888. Thus was
political control localised and the threat of higher taxation
from the growing community of Rutland avoided. Town officers,
state legislators, Governors, and U. S. Senators have burst
from the marble area like corn popping over a hot fire.
In general the machinery used in working granite is used
in the marble shop. Channeling machines are used in the
quarries. Abrasives are sand and water, however, instead of
steel shot and water. Sand and water run under the long gang
saws, which are lighter than granite saws, cut thinner slabs,
and carry more same to the gang. Sand and water are wed in
the rubbing beds, immense revolving plates an which the plebs
of *tome are held and ground to sise. There are five typos
ff exterior finish and three types of interim'. Same polish.'
ing is done by felt polishers using various kinds of polish-
ing powders, and some is done by hand.
In 1800 most of the workers in Proctor were Irish
hardy non who first built railroads, then built mining towns.
That year, the year of the big turnout, saw two carloads of
Prench.Canadian peasants brought in as strike breakers:
Other nationalities have since replaced the Irish workers
to a larre extent. In 1070, when Proctor first started on
his career, he hired in New York a Swedith immigrant named
Larson, who was instrumental in encouraging the first Desdigh
workers to come from the old country to Proctor in the text
decade. Detween 1880 and 1890, 535 rmedes settled in Rutland
County.
By 1890 there were over two hundred Italians In Putland
County, encouraged by Proctor when in the 80's he nude a trip
to Carrara, Italy, to enlist experienced carvers in his nor
monumental projects. Twenty years later there were over
twelve hundred Italians resident in the county.
Between 1900 and 1910 nearly 800 Polish people had settled
in Rutland County, most of Whom were employed in the marble
industry,
athough the le Company has always assured
20.
itself of a oonstant oversupply of labor, a oondition unfavor-
able to labor's living standard there have been sporadic at-
tempts at unionisation. and a few strikes. The strike of
1068 has been mentiened. In 1004 an attempted organisation of
the marble workere by the A. F. L., whiCh had risen to pre-
eminence in labor consolidation during the two preceding years
and was riding the vete of huge memberthip, ended in failure
after a strike of short duration.
In the winter and spring of 1056.6 the Denby, West Rut.
land and Proctor employees of the Vermont Marble Company went
out on one of the most bitter strikes Vermont has ever bean.
Uarble workers in the area, nearly all employed by one company
had always received far less wages than the granite woritcre
under eighty oompenies. Thcre were other causes of complaint
outside of wages. There were workers' accusations of emcee.
sive deductions from their pay for rent, electricity, water,
insurance, hospitalisation, and even cow pasturage; that
polishers were forced to buy the polishing heads for the Ver.
nont rarble Company's racJiinea, and to pay for the poliahing
powder used
nen had received weekly pay checks of two cents, twenty
cents, sixty.eight cents. Many ban received pink vouchers
marked in ink "No Meek." Many were in debt for rent in
company -owned houses were working but a few hours a week.
The tow= were filled with unemployed marble workers ready
to take their jobs if they became dissatisfied V). p, a.
and relief rolls were heavy.
In the fag* of heavy odde, the union bad made eons/dart'.
able headway in organisation. On Movenber 4, 1038 the non
voted to go an strike. During the course of this nine momthe
struggle, the State of Vermont spent over thirty thousand dol.
lare fighting the workers, and the salaries of el:tr.-five
State and town deputies were openly paid by the Vermont Marble
Company.
In J'annary the company attempted to run in soli) labor
and the strikinc workmen joined battle. At one time during
that day seventy figures lay in the bloody snow.
It was a winter of the severest privation. Weekly eon..
tributions to a strike relief fund were mede by their fellow
union workere in Barre, Graniteville, and Websterville, and
by many oduoational and social institutions. One of the toen
overseers of the poor, a foreman for the company, vas eanvicted
in court of withholding town aid for destitute sehool children.
In r!areh, the Associated Industries of Vermont, affiliated
with the American Manufacturers' Association, boasted, "Am enr.
tire series of bills sponsored by organised labor was pre-
vented from being passed and every bill detrimental to sow
ployees wuie defeated." Durinr that sittine of the august
legislature of the sovereign people of the State of Vermont,
the voice of Democracy was reduced to a feeble croak.
After nine months the struggle ended, with but a few
minor rains for the welters. Tinian recognition had lost.
The hourly rate was raised from thirty...seven and one-half
cents to forty cents for labor in the quarry and plants.
22.
twenty-five percent increase in the general wage scale was de-
manded. About one -fifth of the workers got a raise of less
than seven percent in wage rate. Nearly ninety percent of
all the workers would continue to receive fifty cents an hour
or less. The rate of pay in the entire marble area, ununiOn-
ized, was from fifty to thirty-five percent less than the rates
for the same occupations in the granite area, unionized, where
the annual income has been estimated at :;900.
Three years have elapsed since this strike was called
out. Workmen are again complaining that the company is de-
ducting from their pay chocks the cost of polishing powder.
Acute surplus of labor, the standard policy of many
American industrialists, is seen throughout the marble area.
Relief costs and W. P. A. enrollment are higher in West Rut-
land and Proctor than the average for the state, and heavier
than most towns. The largest local project has been the
widening of a marble bridge at Proctor, which necessitated
an expenditure of several thousand dollars for marble.
It is a gloomy picture of rural company towns. Workers
fear spying and intimidation. They are loathe to speak to
strangers about any aspect of their lives, and if they do
offer information* it is guardedly given, and then not
before a cautious glance around the neighborhood to see
who is abroad. Some of the sons and daughters of workmen
gladly accept clerical positions in the company's offices.
Others are bitter against the town and the company. They
make their escape to work in the cities, to bum the country
over with no money in their so long as
they are away from asObie
The worker's home Is usually clean and comfortable, but
most of his furniture is cheap or amend Med. mis radio is
ten years old, and if he lien a oar it is nest remarkable for
its age, noise, and inefficiency* His food budget is close
to the emergency figure, to be resorted to only in case of
national catastrophe, as classified by the U. S. &apartment
of ioulture. This budget is stretched the limit of its
capacity by the thriftiness of his ingenious wife. A few
workers have gardens, some raise chickens, occasionelly
there is one with a cow quartered in a crude hut behind the
house and pastured on the outskirts of the village. The
leaders closest to the workers in the struggle for higher
memo and better living conditions discourage widespread
agricultural pursuits by marble workers. The reasoning is
apparent. These pursuit require several hours weekly work
an top of the hardest kind of manual work, thus in effect in.
creasing the workers' laboring hours in getting -e -living
activity. in, they argue, nay are taking so much business
away from the tamer, whose living also scanty comes from
supplying the nation's industrial workers with food. Indus-
trial wages, they claim, should be h134h enough to supply a
decent standard of living without the necessity of carrying
on two occupations
Other dimensions of the picture are no more cheering.
The marble worker votes for his bosses bemuse the meabine
offers him no one oissj by bte1f he tries to repair the
!Ire rented from the company and always in need of repairs
tall," =not mks; or tries to keep ahead of the nertgage if
he has bought it; he may view with alarm the publisised
paternalism of his employer.
But there are bright sides to life in Uest Rutland,
Proctor and Denby, and the brightest is the cleanliness and
health of his hens and family. There are few slums comparable
to those urban slums that border the railroad tracks. If
there has been Ione-continued poverty, some famityisay,find
itself living in a cold, squalid barn, or a oneoroam ahanty
with canvas in the windows, and then their lot is MOTS dee*
perate than those in city slums. But in the mein, the marble
workers live in houses on which there is at least some
vestige of outside paint; the lawns are smooth* and flowers
bloom near the walls of the house and along the borders of
the street. .he Children, sun-tanned, clean, sturdy -legged
and sturdr-voiced, play bard on the lawns and in the streets.
For many a worker there are few things of which be privately
boasts, but amonc these are his clean children, his neat
and orderly homes his bard -working capable and talkative
wife.
At weddings his wine flows generously, and his small
coins are thrown to the bride and groom to foster the early
establishment of a home
On Saturday nights he watches the kids dance his own
Polish dances, and sometimes be joins in, too; he goes to
the movies at Rutland City, four mils* min he sakes his own
beer the year round and is likely to get well.oarned on a
holiday eve,
At Proctor an a Sunday he goes to mass at a beautiful
church of marble, a gift of the Proctor fenny' '41010-44711
he participatea in the activities of the Sutherland Cldb,
sponsored by the Proctors
The summer sun 'Mines bright and hat an piles of marble
waste; it touches into dancing color the flowers of the
workers' hones it brings into reluctant sparkle the sluggish,
enddy waters of Otter Creek; it makes twinkling spangles of
7losey leaves an the mass of village trees. It is clean sun.
light, full of promises of cheer and clean living. It is a
promise hard to keep.
Elate
Come of the old sidewalks in the village of Fair naves
are large squares of multi -colored slates the new sidewalks
are of °went. That is the story of slate.
In um Colonel Alansan Allen of Fair Haven began the
quarrying of slate on *Sootoh Hill,' School slates were cut
in the first few years, but in 1847 the making of roofing
slates was begun, snd for nearly a huodred years the output
of roofing slate ha's furnished the bulk of income to the
slate quarries. In the earliest days slate slabs were ez.
tensively used for cemetery stonos. Bemuse of its structure
of slaty cleavage, this stone can be split into thin, smooth..
faced slabs by a few blows of mallet and Chisel. It can also
be carved and molded =Doh in the same may ae marble and granite.
During the latter part of the last century and the early
years of the present, slate quarries prospered* turning out
billiard table tops, lavatory accessories, flooring and in..
terior finiahes, school slates, and electrical switchboards
Style° dhanged, substitutee were found. Billiard tablea
were bedded with metal.; pre -oast atom vas used for Marini:3
slate grew out of favor for interior decoration' cheaper and
less durable roofing was used. What slate rooftng is being
done today supplies the bare subsistence of the industry. A
lane amount of slate is ground and used for coating asphalt
ahinclea. 'Alio quarry operator leads a band to mouth existence
The antiquated methods of forty years ago still prevail
with the electric motor the only improvement. hoofing slates
are still cut by hand at pleoe work.
The average slate quarry rarely gives loyment to tore
than eight or ton men. It is elow work. Bilge flat slabs of
slate, weighing ton to fifteen tons are raised from the deep
quarry by hoists operating on cableways, then taken by truck
to the nearby saw mill, or loaded onto a flat car at the quarry
edge and pulled by cable to the mill. Dere they are loaded
on to platforms and fed into the slow.moving saws. ribose saws,
circular, are toothed„ and cut without abrasives into the slate,
which io softer tlaan marble. Sawed to size on four sides, the
block is sent to the slate -makers Shanty. here the worker sets
the block on edge. Chips off thin plates and sends them to
the trimmer's shanty. The sawyer, slate•maker and trimmer
often work on a production basis dividing three ways the
piece work pay for the nuMber of slates made each deq. Cu
good days they nay earn nearly four dollars each.
Lach quarry has its in snail shanties where the slats
is worked. Some plants have large rubbing beds similar to
those In the marble plants, where large slate slabs are
rubbed to size to fill occasional orders for building and
floorinc slate.. Piled an edge against the side of the
or against tree trunks, are large irregular slates that v111
be sold for flagstones. In neat rows through the grass, stocks
of roof Inc slates are piled on edge, assorted by aiSee.
Ownership is in a nebulous state in the slate industry.
Moat operators lease the quarries from the land owner, and
credit him with royaltios in the amount of atone removed.
One operator fell in arrears an royalties of thousands of
dollars, and gave the land owner a job in the quarry at thirty-
five cents an hour. nother operator has sold his busineao
six tines and still remains its owner. come operators own
half a dozen quarries, and work two or three.
The workers are of all nationalities. During the height
of its rrosperity nany Jeldh cane to the slate areas from the
coal anti slate sections of uules, There are only a handful of
these non loft now, their places having been taken by the
i:rench,-Canudians and the reles.
•.ages are low. It has been nany yours since there vas
29.
Many workers die prematurely. Their children are only
carer to escape to lose rigorous climates' and occupations, in
distant places.
The alternating current of State politics flows now to
the granite interests, now to the marble interests.
war chest of considerable size was in recent years ea*
cumulated to fight the California experiment of building a
cemetery without gravestones. Lorre granite men this month
(Jan. 1930) raised 100,000 to publicize Barre granite. Ever
Jealous of any threat to their business, they view with alarms
the contributions of modern science in substitutes and plastics.
Among thencelves, the operators secretly admit their enter-
prises are faced with permanent depression, and only hope
that it will not become disastrous in their own time.
Perhaps they are too pessimistic. It in conceivable
that fickle fashion nay come day welcome household gods made
of polished stone. It is also conceivable that city planners*
architects, governments of the future will re -discover stone
as a medium of building and park beautification. But the
singing of this hope nay be the sean-sonr of zp ite and marble.