Fannie Never Flinched

by Mary Cronk Farrell

  Fannie disagreed. “We don’t want our people carrying,” she said. Seven-year-old Stanley F. Rafalko noticed the commotion as he left Abe Roth’s store with cigarettes for his father and ran to watch. He saw deputies fire their handguns and between shots, one of them beat retired miner Joseph Starzeleski with a club.

  “For God’s sake, don’t kill him!” Fannie shouted. But they ignored her. One of the deputies aimed at Starzeleski and fired five shots into his back.

  Then a man came out of a nearby Allegheny Coal & Coke first-aid shack, carrying an armload of rifles. The man handed them out to the officers as Fannie continued to rebuke them. One of the deputies aimed a kick at Fannie, and she jumped back, falling to one knee. She struggled toward safety behind the Rafalko family’s backyard fence, herding children with her, but the deputy pursued her, swinging his club and hitting Fannie in the head. Then more officers turned on her and fired, hammering her to the ground.

  Two of the sheriff’s deputies at the scene of Fannie’s death. According to eyewitnesses, Deputy John Pearson (left) fired the shots that killed Sellins. Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, August 1919.

  At the scene where Fannie was shot, nine bullets struck the fence and gate. Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, August 1919.

  The deputies moved on to attack another worker, not noticing Stanley. His parents and grandpap were calling for him in Polish, but he ignored them. “I was just a curious kid,” he said later.

  Stanley ran to Fannie. Despite the blows to her head, Fannie’s straw hat remained pinned to her hair. Stanley lifted the brim and saw that she was dead.

  Shocked, he ran away, but continued to watch from a distance. The sheriff’s officers dragged the bodies to a car, Fannie by her feet and Joseph Starzeleski by his collar, and stacked them into the trunk to haul them away.

  That night the justice of the peace charged ten deputies with murder. But the local sheriff’s department did not arrest them. Autopsies showed Fannie died of a crushed skull and suffered three gunshots, two to the side of the head and one in her back. Five point-blank gunshots killed Starzeleski. Seven other men were shot but survived.

  Three days after Fannie’s death, grieving people lined the streets before dawn, waiting for her casket to pass by. Mourners crowded into the little wooden church in New Kensington, where Fannie had lived, a few miles downriver from Natrona. In the largest funeral procession in the town’s history, thousands paid their respects as Fannie’s and Starzeleski’s bodies were borne from St. Peter’s Catholic Church to the Union Cemetery.

  The New York Times reported on the trial of the three men indicted in Fannie Sellins’s death. The United Mine Workers of America petitioned for a special prosecutor in an effort to insure an unbiased prosecution, dateline: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 7, 1923.

  These women were among the thousands of mourners who attended Fannie Sellins’s funeral in St. Peter’s Church, the largest such service in the history of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, August 29, 1919.

  The coroner’s jury verdict found that Fannie Sellens [sic] died from a gunshot wound to the left temple. The document also commended the local sheriff for his prompt and successful action to protect property and persons in the vicinity and for his judgment in selecting his deputies.

  A month later, the Allegheny County coroner’s jury convened in Pittsburgh to examine the evidence. The officers who shot Fannie insisted she was leading a riot and that union sympathizers had attacked them with rocks and sticks. The press reported that Fannie Sellins was killed while on picket duty. The jury disregarded the testimony of some sixty eyewitnesses who gave sworn statements that the attack by the deputies was unprovoked.

  The jury decided the killings of Fannie and Joseph Starzeleski were justifiable homicide, saying, “There were no innocent bystanders,” and “Everyone in the crowd was guilty of rioting.”

  The crowd of people who witnessed Fannie’s death believed she was shot down in cold blood. UMWA leaders fired off telegraphs to President Wilson demanding a federal investigation. One of the deputies accused of shooting Fannie had been heard earlier threatening “to get her.” After the shooting, another was heard saying that Fannie Sellins had finally gotten what she deserved.

  Portrait of Fannie Sellins, c. 1915.

  A Federal Department of Labor investigation languished amid prevailing American fears that labor unions harbored communists. Since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, steel companies had incited this xenophobia and painted strikers as wanting to overthrow the government. This prejudice figured strongly in the attitudes of the coroner’s jury that saw union families as a mob of rioters and ruled that the deputies killed Fannie in self-defense.

  Under pressure from Fannie’s family and the UMWA, a grand jury was called to hear all the evidence. In June 1923, three deputies were indicted for murder and the case went to trial. One of them, the deputy who eyewitnesses claimed shot and killed Fannie, had disappeared. The other two were acquitted of all charges.

  Today, both Fannie Sellins’s death and her passion for the welfare and rights of working people have been largely forgotten. But her name remains hallowed among union people in Western Pennsylvania, and her spirit lives on whenever someone stands up for the American ideals of equality and justice for all.

  Fannie Sellins was buried in Union Cemetery, Arnold, Pennsylvania. The United Mine Workers raised a graveside memorial to Sellins in 1920.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  While researching Fannie Sellins, I was shocked that no one was ever held responsible for her violent killing. This violated my personal sense of justice and, in my opinion, American values. But I soon realized that Fannie’s murder was not an isolated instance, and the failure to pursue justice was not unusual at the time. The facts of the case are hardly even remarkable when viewed in the context of the persistent violence perpetrated against American workers for much of our early history.

  In this book I’ve included facts and figures about some of that violence. However, official records of union people like Fannie killed over decades of worker strikes are spotty. No official body count, no reliable numbers of physical assaults, and no definitive records of worker jailings without due process truly document the violence of the struggle for workers’ rights. But evidence does exist of a distinct pattern of intimidation and harassment of workers by company-hired gunmen, local law enforcement, and National Guard troops—with little or no redress for the victims. And when this brute force failed to halt strikes, industrial and business owners could often count on the strong arm of the United States Army for assistance, as they did in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. (See this page.)

  Did workers, too, ever instigate violence in pursuit of their cause? Yes, there are records of union members blatantly attacking company guards and killing scabs. However, this violence was rarely, if ever, officially condoned or orchestrated by the unions, as it was on the part of company owners and managers.

  After the shooting of Fannie Sellins, unions across the country used her martyrdom to rally workers in the first nationwide steel strike on September 22, 1919. When 350,000 laborers took to the picket lines in cities such as Lackawanna, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Pueblo, Colorado, hired gunmen, police, and soldiers lined up against them. Hundreds of workers were intimidated, beaten, hauled from their homes, and jailed on flimsy charges. Federal troops put down the strike in many cities, leading to more violence and several workers’ deaths. The combination of anti-immigrant propaganda, armed forces, and a fundamental devaluing of the lives of workers slammed unions into submission. Within ten weeks, the strikers folded. As had happened time and again, they went back to work with no gains, their effort a dismal failure.

  Was Fannie Sellins’s death, then, in vain? Did her courage and belief in the rights of workers accomplish nothing?

  Hardly. True, the lengths to which powerful corporations have been willing to go to protect their profits highlights an unbroken trail of shame r
unning through our nation’s history. And changing those conditions required many, many sacrifices like Fannie’s over a long time—more than a century.

  National Guard soldiers funded by business magnate John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Company aim machine guns at a tent camp, temporary home to 1,200 union families. Pelting the tents with rifle and machine-gun fire, they kill an eleven-year-old boy. After a fourteen-hour siege, the soldiers burn the camp. Nineteen people die, including two women and eleven children trapped beneath their tent. Ludlow, Colorado, 1914.

  The power of law—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor-friendly New Deal and the U.S. Congress’s 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act)—finally compelled business and industry to pay attention to workers’ grievances.

  It was ordinary people who wanted change and demanded it. Ordinary people, such as Fannie Sellins, with hope and vision made sacrifices so that all of us might receive benefits such as workplace safety, the five-day work-week, the eight-hour workday, sick pay, and paid vacation time. Though these ordinary, everyday, hardworking people might not be recorded in history books, they strove to create the change America needed.

  After workers made gains in the mid-twentieth century, American labor unions lost strength. Today, opponents debate the need for a minimum wage and workers’ right to organize. Many companies cut health benefits and retirement. The gap between the rich and the poor stretches as wide as it did in Fannie’s lifetime. At the time this book went to print, thirteen million American children were living in poverty, some half million of whom labor in the fields that grow America’s food.

  Poor workers thirst for hope. They hunger for the kind of leadership Fannie Sellins modeled. When I started researching her story, I had one question: How did she have the courage to stand up for the working poor against such huge and deadly odds? Her death in 1919 is well documented in public records, photographs, witness accounts, and newspaper articles. The United States census records Fannie’s birth in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1872. But between those two notable dates are few details. I found no living family members, and as is true for much of history, there exists little written record of poor people’s lives.

  Fannie told union miners in Illinois in 1919 that she had “known nothing but a sewing machine for fifteen years.” Census records from April 1910 note that she lived in a rental house in St. Louis, Missouri, with three of her children: John (age seventeen), Josephine (age fourteen), and Julia (age twelve). It seems that her oldest daughter had, by then, left home. Fannie reported that her younger daughters attended school that year, that she was a widow and mother of four, and that she worked as a seamstress.

  History did not record precisely what Fannie said to her fellow seamstresses to convince them to organize and join Ladies’ Local 67 of the United Garment Workers of America. Likewise, there is no hard evidence of how discouraged she might have felt when facing powerful mine owners, such as Lewis Hicks, or of exactly what she shouted to the men on the train from Birmingham, Alabama, in February 1917. In these instances, I believe that her actions speak even louder than whatever words she might have said, so I have filled in some cracks in the research with my own phrasings. Still, I believe that this book as a whole truthfully portrays Fannie Sellins’s life and her commitment to working people. And in writing it, I discovered that many people shared the same courage she demonstrated. They may not be remembered individually like Fannie, but throughout history many ordinary people had the courage to risk their lives to fight a system they believed was unjust.

  They did not look away from the problems in their neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces. Like Fannie, they tackled them head-on. Today, we still need leaders with Fannie’s courage, commitment, and compassion, leaders who will not flinch but will keep dreaming of and working toward fairness for all. Maybe each of us carries the capacity to demonstrate those qualities in some way that will make a difference.

  GLOSSARY

  arbitration (noun): In reference to labor strikes, arbitration is the process by which workers and company management each submit their side of a dispute to a neutral third party. Both agree to abide by the compromise decided by the neutral person or group, the arbitrator.

  boycott (verb): To stop buying or using the goods or services of a certain company or country as a protest; the noun boycott is the protest itself.

  collective bargaining (noun): The process by which wages, hours, rules, and working conditions are negotiated and agreed upon by an employer and a labor union.

  Great Depression (noun): The economic crisis beginning with the stock market crash in 1929 and continuing through the 1930s.

  lockout (noun): A situation in which an employer shuts down a workplace during a labor dispute, suspends operations, or does not allow workers to return to their jobs until they agree to certain wages, terms, or conditions of employment.

  militia (noun): A body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called on periodically for drills but serving full time only in emergencies.

  National Guard (noun): As originally drafted, the United States Constitution recognized existing state militias, and gave them power to: “execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 15). The traditional state militias were redefined and recreated as the National Guard, via the Militia Act of 1903.

  organize (verb): In reference to labor unions, the act of convincing workers to join the union or to support a strike.

  picket (verb): To stand or walk outside a business or industry, often carrying protest signs, in an attempt to dissuade or prevent workers or customers from entering the establishment during a strike.

  picket line (noun): A row or rows formed by union members or sympathizers in front of or surrounding a factory, store, mine, etc., during a strike.

  scab (noun): A worker who refuses to take part in a strike and takes a striking worker’s place on the job.

  strike (noun): A work stoppage by workers in a united front in protest of the unfair wages or unsafe working conditions imposed by an employer and/or to compel the employer to meet their demands.

  sweatshop (noun): A factory where workers do piecework for poor pay and are prevented from forming unions; common in the clothing industry.

  union (noun): A number of persons, states, etc., joined by a common purpose; in the case of labor or trade unions, workers unite to gain power to bargain for better pay, working conditions, or other benefits.

  xenophobia (noun): A fear or hatred of people from different countries or cultures.

  TIME LINE OF SELECT EVENTS IN THE AMERICAN LABOR STRUGGLE, 1877–1935

  Time lines of labor-union victories do not always show the depth of the struggles and the sacrifices made to achieve gains in workers’ rights. A link to a traditional labor-union time line is located here. However, this time line shows valiant efforts by union workers that were crushed by industrial corporations with the backing of local, state, and/or the federal government. After each instance, union people eventually found the wherewithal to rally and try again, until 1934, when companies were forced by the federal government to recognize unions and negotiate with workers. The United Garment Workers Strike in St. Louis, which Fannie helped organize, is included, though it is a notable exception. That strike was a clear victory for laborers.

  1877 THE GREAT NATIONWIDE RAILROAD STRIKE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  The Maryland National Guard fought its way through striking railroad workers in Baltimore on July 20. The strike against wage cuts swept west along the rails through Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, to San Francisco—100,000 workers halting commerce for forty-five days. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to end the strike, and workers went back to their jobs, taking lower wages. This set a precedent for using federal soldiers to enforce corporate interests against labor.

  1886 HAYMARKET SQUARE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  During a rally on May 4 to suppo
rt workers seeking an eight-hour workday, a pipe bomb exploded in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, panicking both the demonstrators and the police, who opened fire. Seven policemen and at least four civilians died, and more than sixty demonstrators were hurt. In a frenzy, local police rounded up labor leaders and suspected radicals, plus hundreds of workers. No evidence ever identified who threw the bomb, but eight men stood trial, and four were hanged. Historians still debate the accuracy of the charges against these men and the fairness of the trial.

  1892 THE HOMESTEAD LOCKOUT, NEAR PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

  In one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, after days of demonstrating, members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers faced off at the Carnegie Steel Company against company-hired agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in a fourteen-hour skirmish. After collective bargaining failed, Carnegie shut down its Homestead plant and locked out the union workers. Angered at losing their jobs, the laborers took over the plant. After several people died in skirmishes, nine workers among them, state militia arrived, armed with Winchester rifles and Gatling machine guns. They forced the workers to back down and sidelined the union in Western Pennsylvania for two generations.

  1903–1904 COLORADO LABOR WARS

  Striking miners were arrested and forced to leave Colorado after mine owners secretly financed vigilantes (self-appointed law enforcers) and National Guard soldiers to crush the miners’ union. Seventy-two percent of Colorado voters had approved an eight-hour workday, but the mine owners ignored them and paid Pinkerton detectives to incite violence and blame it on the strikers. When dynamite exploded at a railroad depot, killing thirteen and injuring six nonunion men, the Mine Owners Association seized control of the investigation by threatening to lynch the county sheriff—a union member who had been elected by the people and didn’t favor company interests. Laborers in the Cripple Creek mining district would not organize and win their rights for another generation.