Auto-Lite Strikers’ Signatures Preserved on Picket

Robert Mullen

Catalog Number: 2016.006.01

When the United Auto Workers (UAW-CIO) went on strike at the Electric Auto-Lite plant in January 1956, they faced the prospect of picketing their employer during some cold winter weather. Signs were printed reading “Local 396 On Strike,” stapled both sides of a 36-inch stick, and handed out to the strikers. Union members rotated on a 24 hour schedule, each taking a two hour stint in the picket line, so nobody spent too much time in the cold. Yet every member had to participate in order to receive their “strike pay,” a stipend provided by the union while the workers were not being paid.

One striker, Archie Currie, was a former president of the local union. When he took his turn in the picket line, he had seventy-one of his fellow workers sign the stick that held the strike sign. The names were written in a column on the picket stick, which was dated January 12, 1956. First on the list was Alvin Danielson, the president of Local 396. Among the seventy-one signatures are surnames familiar to many long-time residents of La Crosse, both men and women. Mr. Currie stored that signed picket stick in his home for the rest of his life. When his daughter, Karen Hoel came across the board recently, she decided that it was an important piece of local history and donated it to the La Crosse County Historical Society.

The Electric Auto-Lite plant on the north side provided work for some 1300 people at the time. They produced gauges, controls, and equipment for automobiles, providing them to the auto manufacturers. The company began in Minneapolis early in the century, but moved to La Crosse in 1911. Its name changed several times, but most residents referred to it as “the Gauge.”

During World War II, the company hired many female workers to replace the men who had gone into the military. They made gauges for airplanes and were considered essential for the war effort. Following the war, many of the women stayed on and became members of the UAW-CIO.

The 1956 strike was not about salaries, but it was a disagreement about changes proposed by the company regarding dismissal of employees. Labor and management went to arbitration with the U.S. Mediation and Conciliation Service in Chicago later that week, and after a second meeting with them in the Hotel Stoddard in La Crosse, the two hammered out an agreement. Union workers accepted the new contract and the strike ended after eleven days, ending January 23, the strikers moved inside, and the picket signs disappeared—except for this one stick preserved by Archie Currie.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune April 30, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Parlor Games

Caroline C. Morris

In the early 1920s, a common joke went: “Charlie asked Esther if he could call on her. When he showed up at her parents’ house, she had her hat on.” Get it?

In the 19th century, courtship took place under the roof – and supervision – of the relatives of the woman in question. Front porches and carefully appointed parlors were popular locations for young couples to chat, play “parlor games,” and maybe hold hands when Aunt Lucy was not looking. The practice was commonly referred to as “calling.”

In the first decades of the 20th century, however, courtship moved outside of the parlor and away from the chaperones. Instead of pursuing awkward conversation in the parlor with Aunt Lucy, young couples could go to a restaurant and a movie or public event, and could engage in more canoodling than would have been possible in the parlor. Young people called the new convention “dating.”

When “Charlie” asked “Esther” if he could call on her, he was envisioning an afternoon in the parlor. Esther was envisioning an evening on the town. The afternoon in the parlor would have been free; an evening on the town would cost Charlie dearly. An afternoon in the parlor would also have been scripted by etiquette, while a night on the town held endless possibilities. Do you get the joke now?

Like the joke about Charlie and Esther, this postcard makes light of the confusion between “calling” and “dating” in the early twentieth century. In this case, however, the author implies that enterprising young folks might pick and choose among the conventions, bringing a whiff of the “date” to the parlor sofa.

Interested in more information about how American courtships rituals have changed over time? Check out Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 23, 2016.

Beautiful butter added elegance to meals

By Terri Karsten

Catalog Number: 1965.001.911

A hundred years ago, it would be hard to find a kitchen without a butter mold, either handmade or purchased from Sears and Roebuck catalog. For under a dollar, any respectable household could serve decorative butter, a simple way to make the whole meal fancy.

This butter mold reminds us of a time when butter was celebrated not scorned. Two hundred years ago, butter was a staple of the Midwest diet, with individuals eating up to eighteen pounds of butter a year. Indeed, people have been happily eating butter for thousands of years, until the war on butter began, with margarine, oil and abstinence the main competitors. As early as 1855, the NY Times published an article condemning butter in favor of oil. The debate rages on today, even as fashions in eating change. Butter, a ‘natural’ food with only one ingredient, is once again gaining popularity over margarine, which has many highly processed ingredients, some of which are not even recognizable as food. But health concerns aside, butter is certainly more elegant when molded.

Since ancient times in Babylon, Greece, and Rome, food has doubled as art at the tables of the wealthy. In the Renaissance, fancy centerpieces were molded out of various foods, including butter.   One feast in 1536 lists butter sculptures of an elephant and a camel. In the United States the art of sculpting butter soared in the late 19th century, advertising the burgeoning dairy industry. Not surprisingly, Wisconsin had a life-sized butter cow at the state fair in the early 20th century.

While colossal butter art reigned at state fairs, individual ornamental butter remained important. As early as the 18th century, printed butters became common in middle and upper class homes. Until the 1880’s most butter was manufactured on small farms, and most dairymaids (butter making, shaping and selling was considered women’s work) stamped their butter with flowers or other decorations. Like so many kitchen arts, molding butter has practical as well as aesthetic value. The shape printed on the butter identifies the maker and adds uniformity to the product.

Molded butter is both novel and ephemeral. Today, one decorative pat of butter contains about 36 calories and thousands of years of tradition. Not bad for a teaspoon of solid fat.

This article was originally featured in the La Crosse Tribune on April 16, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.