{"id":10989,"date":"2020-10-22T23:29:09","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T06:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=10989"},"modified":"2020-10-23T02:55:52","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T09:55:52","slug":"post1-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=10989","title":{"rendered":"“The True Story of Min Matheson, the Labor Leader Who Fought the Mob at the Polls”, Smithsonian Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Rios and David Witwer, Z\u00f3calo Public Square, October 22, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

The activist rallied garment workers and combated organized crime interests in northeast Pennsylvania in the mid-20th century<\/p>\n

\"Labor<\/span>
Labor leader Min Matheson was an inspiration to the garment workers she organized in Pennsylvania\u2019s Wyoming Valley. Here, ILGWU members picket in Scranton in 1958. (Courtesy of Kheel Center, Cornell University)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Labor leader Min Lurye Matheson made her name facing down the mob. She arrived in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1944, dispatched by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, or ILGWU, to organize the hard-pressed garment workers of the Wyoming Valley anthracite coal region. Here, in towns with deep mob roots such as Pittston, she soon observed first-hand \u201cthe system,\u201d an election day practice in which women signed the polling roster but had their husbands cast their votes\u2014all under the watchful eye of authorities controlled by Russell Bufalino, the gangster depicted in Martin Scorsese\u2019s 2019 film The Irishman<\/em><\/a>.<\/div>\n

The \u201csystem\u201d had long gone unchallenged, but Matheson saw it as the underlying barrier to her fight to secure worker rights. To confront the corruption, she selected a polling site at the heart of Bufalino\u2019s territory, sending a Pittston woman named Carmella Salatino to the polls on election day. Salatino refused to sign the election roster unless she could cast her own vote privately, with her husband standing by in support outside the booth. With Matheson\u2019s encouragement, the Salatinos stood their ground for hours against the pressure of Bufalino\u2019s \u201cpoll-watchers.\u201d They ultimately backed down, but they had made a crucial first step toward change, and it would not be long before Matheson and the women workers of Pittston overcame voter suppression in the town. Later, through efforts like 1958\u2019s Dress Strike, ILGWU members asserted the union\u2019s control over Pennsylvania\u2019s garment industry, and mob-controlled businesses diminished in power.<\/p>\n

Matheson\u2019s career with the ILGWU extended from the 1940s to the 1960s, and she frequently combated organized crime interests in the region\u2019s notoriously corrupt towns, alternately \ufb01ghting against and negotiating with gangsters. Matheson learned the dangers of fighting the mob through personal experience; one of her brothers, Will Lurye, was murdered while trying to organize a mobbed-up \ufb01rm in New York\u2019s Garment District. Yet she was an idealist, and while she has become best known for facing off against the mob, Matheson\u2019s primary importance to the labor movement lies in the inspiration she gave to workers she led, and the way she changed attitudes among working-class women of Pittston like Carmella Salatino\u2014turning them into a powerful political force in the region and a respected civic presence. Her gutsy leadership style and unwavering fight for the ideals of organized labor brought a transformative vision of union power to an unlikely corner of America where tradition held sway, and women seldom got a voice.<\/p>\n

\"Min
Matheson, second from left, with family, at the district attorney\u2019s office after the investigation of her brother Will Lurye\u2019s murder by the mob. Matheson faced off against gangsters throughout her long career as a union organizer. (Courtesy of the Queens Public Library Archives)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early 20th century, Northeast Pennsylvania was a region of small, often isolated townships that had been populated by waves of immigrants who had come to work in the coal mines. For decades the mines had thrived, but by the mid-1940s the coal industry was flagging, leaving families mired in long-term unemployment. Non-union garment factories emerged as an economic lifeline for a desperate workforce of miners\u2019 wives and daughters, who worked long hours under poor conditions, with no recourse and no representation. The workers\u2019 poverty created rich opportunities for garment contractors from New York, some with familial mob ties, who flocked to Pennsylvania for competitive advantage where they could undercut the industry\u2019s wage rates and evade union oversight. This environment, plus very low overhead for entry, presented an opening for mobsters to extend their operations beyond New York and to secure a legitimate front for other illegal activities. The ILGWU sought to stabilize this volatile industry through the enforcement of uniform compensation and working conditions, and it sent Matheson to organize these \u201crunaway\u201d shops.<\/p>\n

Matheson was a born organizer who knew she needed to earn trust to organize garment workers, and that she would need to demonstrate the value of the union to their lives, and not just their livelihoods. To unionize would require courage and defiance from many of these women; attitudes in Northeast Pennsylvania were provincial and patriarchal. \u201cThe men had no jobs,\u201d said Dorothy Ney, who worked with Matheson as an organizer. \u201cThey were out hanging around Main Street while the women worked.\u201d But though the women were the breadwinners, they were still seen primarily as the caretakers of their households, and their male family members were not always tolerant of their union involvement. Union women who followed Matheson\u2019s lead were subject to demeaning and vulgar verbal attacks, as well as physical threat. In the early days of Matheson\u2019s tenure, husbands and fathers often yanked women right out of the picket lines, and hauled them back home. Organizing these workers required upending long-term patterns of subjugation that reached into the civic, economic, and familial aspects of a woman\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

These women\u2019s political realities bore little resemblance to the ideals of American democracy that Matheson upheld, and showed why targeting voting abuses became one of her first efforts. For Matheson, one\u2019s right to vote was an underlying principle of social democratic unionism\u2014an ideal that emphasized workers\u2019 political and economic rights. Whether recruiting workers to the union cause or dressing down a made member of the mob challenging her at the picket-line, she often delivered what she called \u201cher little lecture on democracy.\u201d In it, she held that the electoral process was an essential precursor to establishing democracy in all aspects of a working person\u2019s life. \u201cHaving the right to vote doesn\u2019t make it democratic,\u201d she insisted, telling women they also had to exercise that right, and to push for justice at work. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a labor union or you don\u2019t have an organization to represent you on the job, you\u2019re really being denied your rights, your democratic rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pittston voting gambit was a crucial first step that put the community and the local mob leadership on notice, and demonstrated Matheson\u2019s fearlessness and solidarity with the rank-and-file. An outsider from Chicago, Matheson grew up in a fiercely progressive household with a union activist father who had his own violent encounters with thugs and racketeers. All seven Lurye children attended Socialist Sunday School, and young Min often joined her father at union rallies. Her parents frequently sheltered radicals in their home, including Emma Goldman<\/a>. Matheson\u2019s mother became adept at deflecting police searches during the inevitable raids on their home. \u201cDad wouldn\u2019t work at anything, I don\u2019t care what it was, without getting others who were also doing the same thing together,\u201d Matheson later recalled.<\/p>\n

It was an active, politically engaged climate, and Matheson developed a deep commitment to social justice during her youth. She became a zealous member of the Young Workers\u2019 Communist League, where she met her life partner Bill Matheson\u2014though the Mathesons both broke with the Communist Party when they saw Soviet interests superceding the interests of the American workers they organized. That, and her brother\u2019s murder, distilled her shrewd assessment of ideologues and authority, and galvanized her personal sense of justice.<\/p>\n

Matheson\u2019s direct experience with personal loss in the fight for labor was highly relatable to the women of the coal region. Oral histories from the women who organized with Min show that they felt her deep commitment to their cause, and they treasured their hard-won status. Many recalled their time in the union as life-changing, and imbued with purpose. They never wanted to go back to the days of \u201cno representation, no protections,\u201d and they often spoke of Matheson\u2019s courage and loyalty. \u201cIf we didn\u2019t have somebody like Min Matheson with us, I believe we would have given up because she was so strong and she was down there with us,\u201d Minnie Caputo, who joined Matheson\u2019s organizing team and helped fight the mob in Pittston, told an interviewer. \u201cWe knew when we were in a shop how she fought for every girl and you weren\u2019t gonna give all that up. It would be foolish for us after she fought so hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they refused to go backward. The ILGWU\u2019s Northeast District grew from 404 members in 1944 to 11,000 by the late 1950s, with more than 250 union factories. As representatives of their shops, a growing number of elected chairladies and secretaries flocked to the union\u2019s monthly meetings. \u201cThey loved to hear Min talk,\u201d Ney said. \u201cWhatever she believed in, they believed in.\u201d And Matheson\u2019s ILGWU, with Bill Matheson as director of education, cultivated active political and civic engagement. Union members took on leadership roles on the shop floor, joined school boards, and participated in local Democratic Party politics. In 1957, Pittston\u2019s mayor instituted a \u201cGarment Workers\u2019 Day\u201d to recognize their contributions to the community.<\/p>\n

Matheson\u2019s leadership transformed oppressed garment workers into constructive members of society, with status and dignity. The ILGWU Northeast District\u2019s educational and recreational programs supported local charity drives and created a union newsletter and a radio program, which\u2014typically written by Bill\u2014were notable for their candor, humor, and accessibility. Matheson launched a mobile healthcare unit that traveled throughout the region to serve the needs of the union\u2019s more remote members\u2014the first of its kind. And, to enhance the public perception of the union and provide a creative outlet for members, the Mathesons formed a highly popular chorus, which performed to audiences in venues throughout the area. These activities were guided by principles of community engagement and empowerment\u2014Matheson understood that her members would gain good standing in the community by becoming a visible and vocal presence invested in contributing to the common good.<\/p>\n

After Matheson\u2019s retirement, she lived on a meager union pension and sought to rejoin the ILGWU to organize part-time, hoping to help train a new generation of union activists. The ILGWU did not accept the idea, however, and Matheson died in 1992. Now, in 2020, only about 8 percent of the private sector workforce in the U.S. is represented by organized labor and the vast majority of workers lack the union-won protections Matheson championed. Matheson observed this diminishment in the ILGWU as early as 1988. \u201cI feel that a union has to be constantly on its toes and force conditions to see that the employers live up to their agreement, and the girls have pride in their organization. Otherwise the whole concept of unionism just withers and dies, and I wouldn\u2019t want to see that,\u201d she reflected in a 1983 interview.<\/p>\n

The impact of the long neglect and decline of union power is seen today in the challenges faced by workers, and front-line workers in particular, during the Covid-19 crisis. Decades of complacency toward worker protections are on full view, suggesting that Min Matheson\u2019s empowering message has resonance in the fight to reclaim the rights she and her members fought so hard to achieve.<\/p>\n

Catherine Rios is an associate professor of humanities and communications at Penn State Harrisburg. David Witwer is a professor of history and American studies at Penn State Harrisburg. They are the coauthors of <\/em>Murder in the Garment District: The Grip of Organized Crime and the Decline of Labor in the United States<\/a>. Learn more at their website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Smithsonian Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Rios and David Witwer, Z\u00f3calo Public Square, October 22, 2020 The activist rallied garment workers and combated organized crime interests in northeast Pennsylvania in the mid-20th century Labor leader Min Matheson was an inspiration to the garment workers she organized in Pennsylvania\u2019s Wyoming Valley. Here, ILGWU members picket in Scranton in 1958. (Courtesy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10996,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10989\/revisions\/10996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}