Jack Battuello Memoir #1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Jack Battuello 38
Conditions became so bad and this was in the midst of all the farming
of the Progressive Miners and all that ensued. The boys came to me
one day and said, "Jack, you've been gone for a couple weeks down in
Franklin County, but these kids are starving to death here." 1 said,
"Why in the hell didn't you do something abotit it?" "Well, we're
waiting for you to come back." 1 said, "Okay," so I organized a
truck and four or five fellows and one night in the stealth of the
darkness, we went out to Fred Stems--a farmer who lived out just west
of Wilsonville--and we killed one of his steers and dragged it ta
the hard road, took it to the basement of one of the fellow workers,
butchered it, and distributed meat at five o'clock in the morning.
A year and a half later the mines hadn't been working too much and
what little work we were getting was on a division of work of five
to one. The mine l~ad to work five shifts in order for US to get one
shift--we were dividing work. And so we were making about five dol.lars
a week, sometimes five dollars for two weeks. That was our pay. Our
annua, wage in that period was about six hundred dollars or seven
hundred dollars.
A year and a half later, I went around among the boys and I said give
me a nickel, a dime, whatever you got. 1 didn't even tell them--some
of them you can't talk to you know. I collected $37.50, 1: drove out
with a fellow to Fred Stems place and hc was fixing fences, hamering
that fence. He looked up--he knew me--and said, '%i, Jack, what the
hell brings you out here?" And I said, "f came out to pay you some
money." He straightened up and looked at me and said, "You don't
owe me any money. " And I said, "Yes I do. I' I' Naw," he said, "You
don't owe me any money." You know, T had rented a house from him once
before and he said, "You paid your rent." And I said, "No, I owe you
tl
some money, Naw, I' hc said, "You don't owe me any money. You're
kidding. I' I said, "No, hcrc's what happened: About a year ago we
were hungry. The kids were starving, we needed food, protein especially,
and we came out here one night and butchered one of your big
black steers. I would say that he weighed, just guessing, 1100 pounds."
And T reached in my pocket and said, "Now I collected $37.50, that's
every nickel I could get to pay for that damn steer." And he said,
"Well., 1'11 be go to hell .I1 He said, "You know, I didn't even miss
that stecr." I said, "Well, that's what happened.'' ell," he said,
"Now by gosh, I didn't miss that steer, but since you tell me, thaz's
my contribution to the kids and the strike." I said, "NO, I've
collrcted this dam money, 1 didn't even put it down. I don't even
know who in the hell I got it from now." And I stuck it in his pocket,
So you see, he had bccn molded and melted into this kind of philosophical
thing that had occurred in the village.
Well, we had mother experience there. Nellie Gahagirn and two children,
about two and three years old--her husband had left her, had abandoned
her. Before that happened, they had bought this house, years before,
on a financing basis and they were paying so much a month for it.
Jack Battuello Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield