Jack Battuello Memoir #1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Jack Battuello 31
leadership there one time back. It used to be a hell of a town at
one time, but everybody became a silent: social traveler--"We'll
accept what is and the hell with tomorrow."
So the community just sort of strayed waywardly away from all social.
concern and it showed, too, in all these things I've menrioned and
described. You could expect them to he reactionary in the mine situation
if thc confrontation was between the coal miner and the coal
operator on justifiable grounds. They were always lamenting that
if they didn't come right out and say, "I'm against that," they'd
say, "~et's take another course, let's reasan with them. After all,
if wc lose this little condition, what the hell, that's not the end
of the world. We'll accept it and go on." You know, things like
that huild and develop and finally cngulf everybody. "Compromise,
compromise. "
Now Collinsville is Progressive. You go down there on a mine or
civic issue, a political issue, speakers would be always good.
Thcy're there with their money; they're there with the support.
You know our labor and revolutionary periodics, they disappeared
from the face of the United States a few years back. Evcry community
years ago used to have flaming labor press, you know, in one form or
another--magazines, papers. Everybody had a good paper like the
Industrial Worker --, like the Socialist Paper, the Synd&calis,t, the
---
Anarchist. Everybody was distributing and disseminating literature
in these communities. Of course we looked for it; we developed it;
we sought it. And so the communities that had good social advoca~es,
they were friendly, they were gregarious, they treated you right,
There was no fighting, no stealing; we didn't have to lock our doors,
our cars. We could leave a car out there with thirty million dollars
worth of bullion in it--nobody would ever touch it. We had no palfcc;
we didn't use no jail--we talked against jail.
We had no churches in our towns. If a Catholic died and he wanted
services from the Catholics, then a priest would come from Bunker
Hill at a little chapel there, just for that purpose. We wanted to
debate with a Catholic prZest about the question of religion and
social things; we challenged him to debate either in his house of
worship or the saloon, we didn't care where--or On the street. So
we had no churches; we had no polic-e; we had no guns except to hunt
for food. WE had a hel"l of a community--had a hell of a region.
Q. When you say community, you're meaning total community, not just
the mine workers clement but the whole town?
A. 1'11 tell you how Tar reaching it was. During the formation of
the Progressive Miners and the strike which ensued, we ran out of
food. Nobody had any food. Children were hungry and starving even
in our town, especially those with eight or nine children in a family
and some had ten.
Jack Battuello Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield