1930 H.C. Aberle Strike and the Murder of Carl Mackley

In 1930, the unionized hosiery workers at the H.C. Aberle Mills in Kensington struck against wage cuts, demanding arbitration from the bosses. As tensions rose in the midst of the depression, violence broke out between strike supporters and scabs.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Hello and welcome to Labor Drop Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

That I'm amazed that you got that on the first take.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Hello, everybody. It's been six months since we've recorded an episode because Sam tried to get his fledgling rap career off the ground. And it's worked. Yeah. It took me six months to write that. No, I wrote that today, like literally two hours ago. With no help, uh, and it didn't parody any kind of rap song that came out in the past, you know, 35 years or so. Oh, I thought I took I thought I kicked all the cats out of the room. Hello. Oh, this is a great start. My name is Sam. Oh, everybody, it's so great to have you here in our in our little special room here in our studio with us. It's been a while. My name's Sam. Sam James. What's your name? My name is Gabe. Gabe Christie. And today, we're gonna get right to it.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Shut up, we are indeed. With the kitty cat.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

With the kitty cat. That's Emheris.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Oh, hello, Emher. Well, Gabe. Welcome to it. What are we gonna talk about today, Gabe? Today, we're going to be talking about the 1930 H. C. Aberley Company hosiery mill strike. That's a lot of words. It is. So it's the 1930 HC Aberley strike. I guess we can shorten it down to that.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Also, if you've had six months to compile this episode and all the references and everything, um, this is going to be our best episode yet, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I think I wrote this about four months ago and have forgotten most of it. So I'm learning as we go. Woo! So were we, Gabe. We're professionals. There we go. Now the slide changed. Okay, so as you can imagine, uh, this is another silk stocking strike. Oh. Yeah. Uh so to give a very brief synopsis of silk.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Well, Gabe, are we gonna talk Gabe? Are we gonna talk about Silky Smooth socialism today? We are. It's my favorite topic.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Let's go. To give a very brief synopsis of the origins of Silky Smooth socialism. Uh in the 19 teens, hemlines started to shorten on women's skirts. This coincided with a change in style towards shoes rather than boots for daily wear. Uh, this in turn led to a preference for showing off a little bit more of your hosiery or your stockings. Uh as you can see in the image, I guess it's on the right, because this is flipped. That's annoying. Is is that a calf? It is a calf. Uh but yes, you can see uh there's a little bit more leg being shown, which meant that women were now showing off their stockings, which then led to higher demand for higher quality stockings. Sorry, I meant moo. Shh, get it, Kath.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Oh, goddamn. Uh wasn't be the creep. That's the only reason why I mm to it, Gabe.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Uh well, I mean, I guess moo is also oom backwards and the slides backwards. So I'm thinking too much about this. Anyway, we're gonna continue on. All right, let's go. Uh so to meet that demand, hosiery companies expanded production to take advantage of a booming market. And one of these companies was H. C. Aberley and Company, located on A Street between Lippincott and Clearfield, uh, up in kind of the Kensington area. Uh, it was actually originally founded by Harry C. Aberley and his father, Frederick Aberley. Uh uh Frederick was a German immigrant and industrialist, came over, got involved in textile trade. Uh, his sons all kind of took on the family business and uh started up in uh knitware and hosiery.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Uh so now we go into, you know, the Great Depression, everybody's favorite thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Uh my second favorite depression.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Well, yeah. The 1929 stock market crash. Uh, but at least in the beginning, in going into the early 30s, demand for silk stockings was still high. So this was a uh a relatively stable product, uh, which meant that uh the production was still high and the companies were still able to squeeze out as much profit as they could. Great.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah. Happy happy.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

And now, next slide. See when it wants to load. Oh, there we go. Okay, so I have to scroll over that. Anyway, uh slowly how to do this after six months. Uh I forgot how to talk. Uh so while business was continuing and was booming, the owners of the Aberley hosiery mills did everything in their power to squeeze as much profit out of their workers as they could, you know, surprisingly. And they they ain't just squeezing legs, Gabe.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

The the uh the Aberley company uh owned uh actually a bunch of different mills. Um they uh uh also owned the Fidelity and Hancock Mills, also in Kensington, but the HC Aberley Mill, which is the main one that we'll be talking about, was the largest that had over a thousand employees uh and employed both men and women.

unknown 7:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Uh so Aberley Company had various mills and were building economic power. The American Federal It's been six months since I've said this name. The American Federation of Full-Fashed Hosiery Workers, AFA.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Well, Gabe, that was better than my rap, so I bowed down, taser.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

If you can uh your next challenge is to include American Federation of Full-Fashed Hosiery Workers in a rap lyric.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Oh that's gotta be like a Welsh song or something. Oh god. Uh I'm not gonna explain that joke. Even to myself.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Um AFA uh was already building labor power uh across the hosiery mills in the city.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Uh they had actually already threatened a strike at I'll give you a second. Okay. Oh yeah, you have mobile headphones now.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Uh for those of you at home, I'm watching Sam wrangle his cats, and it's very entertaining. Hi. Uh so they had already threatened to strike at uh the Aberley Mill in 1926 uh over an attempt at implementing the what was called the two machine system, uh. Where uh worker every worker was responsible for two knitting machines rather than one. So effectively doubling their workload with while keeping them at the same wages. You you answered everyone's question, Gabe. Yeah. Uh I realize we've talked about the two-machine system in just about every single knitting mill strike. So this was a uh they were really pushing for this in the 20s and 30s. And AFWA was fighting tooth and nail to prevent them. Uh more work, less pay? Yeah. Baba John's. Honestly, yes. Uh so uh they had uh AFWA actually won a closed shop contract at the Aberley Mill or at the uh Hancock Mill, uh which was owned by the Aberley family. So they were probably the Aberley family was probably not very happy that AFWA was present in any of their mills. Oh no. Yeah. Uh so by the late winter and early spring of 1930, the management at the H. C. Aberley Company mill, the main one, decided that they needed to extract even more profit out of their workers and started to implement wage cuts uh and changes to the work schedule. And uh this pissed everybody off. So the union declared a strike sometime in late February 1930. I could not find an exact date. Oh. The basically the earliest newspaper accounts just say like the strike that started last week. And that's it. So I couldn't find the exact date. Uh great reporting to go into the AFHW archives, which I think. And do Gabe's job for him. Yeah. That are at the University of Michigan and digitize them for me. Uh I would appreciate that. And you'll pay them, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

More work, less pay, Gabe.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Something like that, yeah. Uh pay him in exposure. Oh my God. Um strike starts late February 1930. Picket lines go up all around the mill, uh, and at first were fairly peaceful. But the bosses started to try to bring in scabs, and tensions rose very quickly. So on the evening of Friday, February 28th, 1930, 24-year-old hosiery worker James Smith was walking to his home at 7th and Dauphin after a shift at the Aberley Mill. So he was a scab. Uh, he was attacked by a group of men who beat him, uh, leaving him with a fractured skull and being treated at the Stetson Hospital. Uh it was assumed at the time that the men who attacked him were strikers from the mill. Uh, and one man named John McFall, uh, who was at second lived at second in Lippincott, was arrested with a hearing scheduled for the next day, March 1st. Uh, this was the first instance of violence uh at the Aberley strike. And that same day, uh Mayor Henry or Mayor Harry Aristamackey, which is a great name. Uh his initials are Ham. It's Mayor Ham. How did he never go up yet? I get I think he was only a one-term mayor. Um and uh, you know, maybe that's a tradition. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

I have so many pork puns, Gabe. Um I was gonna ham it up for you.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Uh anyway, so he sent a letter uh to the management at H. C. Everly asking that they agree to an arbitration board made up of Dr. Paul Abelson of New York, Dr. Jacob Bilikoff, who is the executive director of the Federation of Jewish Charities, and a third member who would be named by the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Oh. To make things complicated. Okay. So give some background. The uh strike started, the there was an incident of violence, the mayor comes in and says, hey, let's do some arbitration. By March 4th, the union had agreed uh to arbitration. They sent a letter to the mayor stating that the terms were acceptable and that they were ready to start negotiations immediately. However, management of the company was less willing to comply, arguing that the this dispute went deeper than just wages, and they declared that they would not accept the arbitration board.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

It's like an onion, it has layers, Gabe.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

It has lots of layers and is pretty stinky. So arbitration would have to wait. Meanwhile, the strike, you know, was still ongoing and there were still pickets out front, uh, and they were still trying to bring in scabs. And so as as we've talked before, or talked about before, uh Kensington, especially at this time, was a very like tight-knit working class, basically mill worker neighborhood.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Uh very dense.

unknown 15:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

No, that wasn't a fucking joke. Well, yeah, I think population-wise, it was dense.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Uh you can see in this picture, it's basically uh, or in this map, it's literally just row homes and then like a block of factories, and then more row homes. Um with the uh Aberley company sharing a block with a packing box factory and uh also owning the block next to it so that they can expand their factory at some point. And yeah, it was basically like tiny Philly Row homes and then giant factories everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Um so the side effect of that is that when there's a strike on, tensions in the neighborhood around that mill get very, very high because everyone chooses a side, and uh there's especially as economic pressures are rising during the third or during the beginning of the depression, uh, everyone is starting to pick a side and pick fights. Uh the uh uh so as the as the strike went on, tensions just got higher and higher and higher. Um and uh the workers on strike were also getting increasingly frustrated after learning that uh management had refused arbitration. Cool. So in the afternoon of March 5th, a large crowd of strikers and their sympathizers had gathered out front of the mill. They were there uh maintaining a picket line and trying to encourage any workers uh who were scabbing to join them. There were a couple police uh observing them who had been called in to maintain quote-unquote labor peace.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Uh when the scabbing workers left the plant, tensions finally should Gabe, going forward, anything the police says can be in Puttington quotations, okay? Oh yeah. That's that's very true. All right.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

So when you speak of pork bunts. Uh when the scabs left the plant, tensions finally boiled over, and someone in the crowd threw a stone at a motorcycle policeman striking him. The officer dismounted, marched into the crowd by himself to arrest an attacker. Yeah. Okay. Uh and then was immediately surrounded by the strikers and uh set upon by them. What did you think was gonna happen? Yeah, like you're walking into an angry crowd. They're gonna beat the shit out of you. This is first day on the job.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah. Uh back then they needed more than 20 hours of training to become a cop.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah. Yeah, it was like 21 hours and most of the time. 22, Gabe. It was 22. Do your research, bud. Oh, okay. You're right. Uh well, the issue is that this was also back in the day where you were also racist against different types of Europeans. So you had to be able to differentiate between like an Italian, an Irishman, and a pole.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Aaron Ross Powell It was harder to be a cop back then.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

It was. It was much harder. Uh respect.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Respect.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

So uh the rest of the police attempted to surround and apprehend the ringleaders uh of the strike, hoping that uh doing that they could rescue their lone motorcycle cop. Uh but they were completely outnumbered. Uh and basically, like, they tried to go in and make a hole in the crowd, and effectively that started a riot. Uh the scabs who were attempting to leave the plant ran back inside to take refuge, and the police called for reinforcement. So uh police wagons and cars were dispatched from nearby stations, and pretty soon there were 30 cops who were present, and they were able to apprehend most of the militants in the crowd. Uh they loaded them into the police wagons, sped them over to the police station at front in Westmoreland. Crowds of strike sympathizers harassed them the entire way, because again, like tiny neighbor or tiny Kensington side streets. So uh they were able to block them and uh and harass them the whole time. When they got to the station, they backed the wagons up to the front street entrance, formed a wall of cops between the back of the wagon and the front of the uh station, and had to like physically block anyone from uh preventing the arrest. Or to uh keep the arrestees uh arrested. Arrested, yeah, to get them inside. Um so they managed to get them inside the uh police station, but shortly after that, a massive crowd grew out front, uh, which was blocking traffic across West Merlin Street. They tried to press their way into the station to free, uh they had actually apprehended 65 people from the initial crowd. Uh police fought back, eventually enlisting firemen from across the street to fight back the crowd. I know.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Come on, guys.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

So Which side are you on? Uh well, they at least weren't fully successful because a small group managed to break into the roll room of the station. Uh another man threw a heavy crowbar through a window, which injured injured a police sergeant. Uh and uh so eventually, despite all of this, they did manage uh to book all sixty-five people that they had arrested, forcing them into just eight jail cells. Okay. Uh so I I don't want to think about how cramped those probably were, because these were also probably like Six by ten cells with uh ten people in each. Uh so uh they were they were all forced in there, but then I'm sure the police realized like keeping them here is one, not a good idea, and two, they don't have the space for it. So they were almost immediately released after just being handed a uh written copy of their charges and apparently being given a stern warning from the magistrate. Oh my god. To behave themselves. Yeah. Uh so Angry Pickets stayed outside of the Aberley Mill until 8 p.m., uh, at which point the scabs were finally willing to leave once the picket line subsided. So everyone went home that evening uh with only some minor injuries to the motorcycle cop, probably anyone who was hit with a blackjack or something. Or yeah, and then the one police sergeant that got hit with a crowbar.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

I mean, I don't mean to feel bad for a cop, but uh just a crowbar coming through the window and hitting you kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, it would be uh a kind of terrifying thing to just have like a crowbar fly through a window unexpectedly. Like you you'd expect a brick or a rock, but a crowbar is that is a unique experience. Uh so the next day, Thursday, March 6th, uh tensions were even higher because you know there was a bit of a fight the day before. Uh news of the huge crowd, the 65 arrests, and the small riot had spread through all of Kensington, uh, and the mill was surrounded by even more pickets and sympathizers. Uh, four scabs managed to get through the picket line and hopped into their car to drive off. Uh, one young striker, a guy uh by the name of Carl Mackley, who was only 22 years old at the time, spotted them, uh, told his friends he was going after them, and jumped in his car. He was joined in his car by John Cooper, William Zimmerman, and Walter Morrow. Uh four of them gave chase after the car full of scabs, which at this point uh already had a good start, or a good head start. Uh so you might recognize that name. And we'll get into that in a little bit. So eight other strikers and sympathizers got into two more cars and followed after Mackley to back him up. So from the newspaper accounts, the their description of the chase doesn't quite match with the actual maps of where everything ended up happening. So I think Mackley chased the scabs up Fifth Street to Rising Sun, then took Rising Sun up towards the Roosevelt Boulevard. Uh so I can draw on this. So I don't know if that showed up.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

It didn't, Gabe. Oh. Oh well. Oh, and everybody playing the home, Gabe. We go to YouTube because we put this stuff up and like follow along with us. We Gabe finds these maps and everything. It's brilliant. A lot of friggin' effort goes into this shit. Um Did you hear my rap song in the beginning? God damn, of course not.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Uh okay, so uh so the scab car came up to the boulevard, uh, and it being the Roosevelt Boulevard, uh, the light turned red immediately. Uh everyone had red light tickets. Yep. Uh so they had they despite like being chased and probably recognizing that they were probably running for their lives, uh, they stopped at the red light and uh Macley was right behind them and pulled up next to their car. The two groups of men started yelling insults at each other from across each other's cars, and tempers continued to rise. Eventually, someone in Macley's car threw something at the scabs and broke one of their windows. This was the last straw, and a burst of gunfire exploded out of the scabs car. Macley was hit in the head, immediately slumped over the steering wheel. Moro threw himself to the floor of the car, avoiding the bullets. Zimmerman and Cooper were both caught uh uh or were both hit, but neither of them fatally. Uh lucky, well, surprisingly, there was a policeman at the intersection who saw the entire thing unfold uh and jumped into the running board or jumped onto the running board of the scabs car uh and immediately took all four of them under arrest. Okay, okay. Yeah. So obviously, in a neighborhood where tensions were already high, that's also very densely populated, uh, hearing gunfire in the middle of the day draws a crowd. So about 5,000 people from the surrounding neighborhood uh to see what had happened. And the police very quickly sensed, like, oh, this is going to turn into another riot, and it's gonna be bad. So 500 police officers from every district in the city were rushing to Roosevelt and Rising Sun uh to break up the crowds. Meanwhile, the four scabs were taken uh to the police station, and the eight strike sympathizers who had been following Mackley were taken in for questioning as material witnesses. So Macley, uh, who again was a 22-year-old worker, had been out of work for two weeks, uh, and was the sole provider for his two parents, Joseph and Katie, uh, who are aged 67 and 60, as well as his younger brother Henry, who was aged 14. Uh Carl was supposed to start a new job the next Monday. Uh so he also wasn't even on strike at Averley. He was just a sympathizer that was one to help out his comrades. So uh the American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers announced uh that a public funeral for Macley would be held on Sunday, March 9th. Meanwhile, the owners of the Aberley Mill were still adamant that there was no need to arbitrate and that the disturbances they refused to call it a strike were caused by a few outside agitators. They sent a letter to the mayor, basically rebuking his offers for arbitration, and went on to say that if the mayor forced them to accept the union's demands, they would be forced to shut down operations and leave the city.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Oh, oh, oh! Pulling a bezos. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yep. Normal nonsense.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah. There's that familiar picture. Yep. So Sunday, March 9th, uh, tens of thousands of Philadelphians gathered in McPherson Square in Kensington. Uh, at one end of the square, across from the library to across from uh the grand library, a platform had been constructed where hosiery workers, labor leaders, and worker advocates and allies had assembled in mourning. Uh in front of them there was an empty trestle. Uh this was the public funeral for Carl Mackley. Uh it had a gathering of an estimate or over an estimate, an estimate of 25,000 people.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Uh came out to mourn him. All right. At about 2 p.m., a band started playing uh Chopin's funeral march. Three motorcycle policemen slowly drove through the path that had been made in the center of the crowd, followed by 80 mourners walking two by two, each with a white carnation in their lapel. Behind them was a long procession of open-top cars full of flowers and each bearing the name of different labor organizations from across the Northeast U.S., finally followed by a hearse draped in the American flag and more flowers. So as the procession approached, the police who'd come out expecting more riots actually snapped to attention, uh, and the tens of thousands of mourners, at least all of the men, removed their hats. Uh the coffin bearing the body that had been laid uh which had been laid in view in Knitter's Hall, which was uh the hosiery workers' headquarters on Broad Street. So Macley had been laid in an open casket uh for viewing uh since or until uh probably this the morning of the 9th. Um so the coffin was slowly carried to the trestle, followed by Macley's family, who were all dressed in black. Uh Reverend Frederick B. Halsey, who was the rector of St. Ambrose's Episcopal Church, gave the opening address uh imploring those present to work peacefully for spiritual justice and to bring the kingdom of Jesus to all men of goodwill. He was followed by a long line of labor leaders, from William Smith, who is the Secretary Treasurer of the American Federation of Hosary Workers, uh Edward, Edward McGrady, who is the legislative representative for the American Federation of Labor, uh, as well as William Green, who was president of the AF of L.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Yeah, and hey, it's kind of crazy to have the I mean, this isn't just any funeral, this was obviously a very big deal. Um so McGrady finished his speech by asking all of those present to swear the following oath. I hereby solemnly promise that I will continue the struggle against low wages, poverty and oppression, and that I will not falter nor be intimidated by hired assassins, nor discouraged by a subservient and ofttimes tyrannical judiciary, that if necessary, we too will lay down our lives in order that all those who toil may be delivered from industrial enslavement by the un-American, avaricious industrial despots. To all of which I, at the grave of our martyred brother Carl Mackley, do pledge my most sacred word of honor.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Damn. Yeah. I want that at my funeral if I deserve it. God damn.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

That is a hell of an oath. Uh so finally, uh Mayor Mackey had actually written a letter expressing his regret for Macley's death and his regret at the boss's continued refusal to accept arbitration that, you know, started this whole thing. So at the conclusion of the service, the body was moved to Forest Hill Cemetery on Byberry Road uh with a funeral procession of almost 500 automobiles, followed by the Hearse. Which, especially in 1930, seeing 500 cars must have been insane.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

With all of them going, oh woo. Anyway, it's been depressing for the past 10 minutes. I gotta put something. That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

That's fair. Uh yeah, and uh I don't know, I just keep thinking about like how many times they probably all stalled out at every red light. Uh all right.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

So that was the funeral of Carl Mackley.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

And the so the ninth, Sunday the ninth, was a day of relative peace and mourning. Uh the next day, however, Kensington kind of exploded again. Oh no. At 8 p.m. on March 10th, a group of quote-unquote freelance strike sympathizers started showing up outside of the homes of scabs, urging them to join the union and go on strike. When their arguments failed, they proceeded to pelt the house with rocks and bricks. Uh eventually, this small crowd grew into a mob of a few hundred men and women. Uh a young woman by the name of Nellie Kidda of 2901 King Kingston Street, who is an employee at Aberley and had been continuing to work despite the strike, was harassed by the crowd, and after being seized by some of the men, had her clothing torn. Oh. She managed to escape, ran into her home, grabbed her revolver, which she then fired into the crowd, but didn't manage to hit anyone. Jesus Christ. Uh so uh violence and more fights between the police and strike sympathizers continued throughout the evening. Police started or stated the next day that most of the disturbances were caused by young men and women aged 16 to 21, about 60 of whom had been arrested by the end of the night. So again, the next evening on the 11th, uh there was even more just kind of random street fighting. Uh young sympathizers attacked the home of a scab. This time the homeowner responded by firing a shotgun directly into the crowd.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

No, stop!

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Yeah. Uh hitting eight people who were hospitalized, uh, but no fatalities. At this point, John Edelman, who is the executive of the American Federation of Full-Fash and Hosiery Workers, spoke out against the violence, uh, stating that none of the none of those arrested were union members, uh, and that the union is receiving a bad break in this situation. Basically, uh young hoodlums who belong to neither side are stirring up this trouble, and the workers are getting blamed for it. We do not believe in radical measurement measures. We are not Reds, neither are we communists.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Okay. Okay. What? Why are they catching flack? They catch it strays out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

The Hosary or the AFFHW were uh tied to the Socialist Party, so they were looking for any excuse to blame communists. Um I think it's much more likely that uh you had an economic depression going on, and a lot of people were out of work, and a lot of people were very angry, and this gave them an outlet for that. Unfortunately, everybody else was caught in the crossfire. Uh but yeah, basically, it seems like the the youth of Kensington were using the strike as an opportunity to take out their frustration. Uh meanwhile, Averley management uh was finally starting to budge. Uh, they were willing to sit down and speak with a council made up of representatives from religious, business, and civic groups. Uh the focus of the discussion was initially ending the violence in Kensington. It was uh and was hosted by the director of public safety, a guy named Schofield. Uh it at least marked the first time that Aberley management was willing to like acknowledge that something was happening and not just be like, oh, this is totally unrelated to the fact that we're not willing to pay our workers a living wage. Yeah. Um they had silk stockings in their ears. I mean, you gotta make the silk stockings. So uh then Emil Emile Reeve, who is the president of AFFHW, spoke to the press saying, we are broadcasting an appeal to the entire community, urging all responsible persons to assist us in keeping the peace at this time. If misguided and alleged, if misguided, if misguided and alleged sympathizers are, and alleged sympathizers are throwing bricks into homes thinking they will help the strikers, they are mistaken. And we wish to tell those individuals that they are most emphatically hurting our cause. So despite the union's pleas, though, uh violence continued until March 15th. By that point, the mill owners finally agreed to arbitration. Uh unsurprisingly, they were also acting like they had intended to agree to arbitration the entire time.

SPEAKER_03 41:30

From the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Yeah. Ignoring like three weeks of stonewalling this entire process and causing at least one death and like multiple injuries and uh one sexual assault. So the union saw a path to something of a conclusion, if not an actual victory. Uh and they also declared that they would create a volunteer force of 100 men who would patrol the area around the mill to keep the peace and prevent folks from using the strike as an excuse for violence. Uh so basically they set up a community safety group. Nice. Uh the arbitration board had changed considerably, though. It was now made up of Benjamin Squires, the chairman of the men's clothing industry. Uh the uh uh then there was Morris L. Cook, who is consulting engineer and former director of the Public Works for Philly, and Morris E. Leeds, who is the president of Leeds and Northup Company, uh, and head of the Philadelphia Metal Manufacturers Association. So uh it was three business leaders were now the arbitration board for this strike. Which uh I'm sure you can imagine that went really well. Uh so the workers accepted the arbitration, though, because they they wanted to get to something of a conclusion here. Um and by March 24th, uh one, the uh Union patrols and like civil police or not civic policing, but community watch effectively uh was proving fairly effective. It was much more peaceful in Kensington now. Uh and by March 24th, uh the board decided that they needed the strike to end to continue the review. Uh the board did. So by 26th, by March 26th, the workers agreed to a return to work with the understanding that both them and Aberley would abide by whatever the final decision of the arbitration was. So they at least forced Averly into arbitration, which was more than they'd gotten before. Arbitration continued into April, when finally, on April 16th, 1930, a final agreement was reached. The details weren't made public, but the what they did say was that there were some wage concessions from the workers, but overall they were able to survive without the major wage cuts that they had initially threatened, or that management had initially threatened.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

So they didn't have to money, but not all of the money?

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Yeah. They were at least able to get reduced wage cuts. So uh so the workers accepted it, dropped it up as like something of a win, but by May, the Aberley company was having a hissy fit, uh, arguing in the inquiry that they were unable to run a or to turn a profit uh and would have to leave the city. Now, so they were they were all getting upset about that, uh, and claiming that they were gonna have to leave by the end of the year or by the end of the summer. That doesn't seem to have been the case because later in the summer, they were also part of a panel of business leaders who were reporting an increase in hiring and sales figures in the department store industries. So they uh yeah, despite having to at least not reduce wages as much as they wanted to, they actually saw an increase in profits. Are businessmen full of shit, Gabe? A little bit. A little bit. Uh much like cops, you you should take everything they say in big ol' air quotes.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Uh we should have we should have front-loaded the episode with that.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah. Uh so uh William Pfeiffer, who was the man who had shot Macley, was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter charges by a jury on May 31st. Yeah. The uh in response to that, Ida Macley, who was Charles's sister, was carried physically carried out of the courtroom as she was screaming justice at the top of her lungs. Jesus fucking Christ. The man who murdered her brother uh got off scot-free.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Yeah. A wooga, a woogah. God damn it.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Now, that is not the end of Carl Mackley's legacy and saga, though. Uh and now we should uh talk about the Carl Mackley houses. Hey, okay. Uh which I think at some point I need we need to do an episode specifically on them and on uh really the outsized impact that they had, because it was really cool. Um but in 1935, in a ceremony attended by Labor Secretary Francis F. Berkins, uh, the Carl Macley Houses at the intersection of M and Castor up in Junietta Park were the first housing project to be funded, or the first project to be funded by the housing division of the Works Progress Administration. The Macley Houses were a large complex of single-family apartments designed as a unified community uh that encompassed a full city block. Uh basically, the idea was to create a like ultra modern, very safe and hygienic neighborhood for lower-income workers uh who had been suffering under all of the land and price speculation uh during the Great Depression. So the they were built by a partnership between the WPA and the Hosiery Workers Union. Uh and if I remember correctly, it was the hosiery workers submitted the or had already drafted up the plans and wanted to build them, and they submitted the plans to the WPA for a grant. WPA gave them grant money and uh also provided some labor for it. Um and this kind of like set the initial uh foundations for the WPA's housing program moving forward. Um which once conservatives in Congress and the Senate found out that they were giving houses to poor people, uh they pretty much immediately tried to defund it. Yeah, WPA housing program was really fucking cool, but did not last very long. So uh but the project was built uh in a partnership between WPA and the AFHW. Uh when it was completed, it had hundreds of apartments ranging from one to three bedrooms, had a community center, a playground, multiple playgrounds, a pool, uh, and the complex was, or the entire place was managed cooperatively by its residents uh and collectively owned by the union. So uh union members got uh discounted uh uh rents or yeah, had discounted rents. Everyone had a say in how their building operated and was managed. Um and also because the uh wasn't it was basically operated on a nonprofit basis that you weren't gowed or being gouged uh by your landlord. Because to a certain extent. Yeah. To a certain extent, the people living there were their own landlords. Uh so the the Carl Mackley houses actually still stand today. Uh I think the pools have been filled in, and the community center is now a laundry. Um but uh the playgrounds are still there, all the buildings are still there. Uh and it is, however, now owned by a private residential management company, so it has a landlord. Um there is, however, still a mural commemorating Carl Mackley and the 1930 Aberley strike uh in the former community center. But I've not been able to find a picture of it. Uh so if anyone has a picture of it, I would love to. God damn it, Gabe. I'm paying you.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Subscribe to our Patreon. That we have done nothing with since January. Yeah. Hey, there's stuff there. There's bonus episodes.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

There are bonus episodes. Uh but yeah, so that that was the 1930 uh Aberley hosiery mill strike and the murder of Carl Macley.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Oh, okay. Yeah, we know Gabe. Yeah, we know. We just listened to that. Um well, cool, except for the last part. But cool, no, I mean, cool for the the houses. I mean, damn. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

No, the the Carl Macley houses are a really neat little piece of Philly history. And um, and the fact that like the this like hosiery workers union in Philly helped set uh federal housing policy kind of inadvertently. Um and even if it was short-lived, they still like they helped jumpstart what became the uh Department of Housing and Urban Development.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

There we go.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Uh and all because the Aberley company uh were butt faces and didn't want to arbitrate. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

I think it's the first time we use the word butt faces on this podcast, Gabe. That's a fair point.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

I I I think we need to include it in our lexicon more.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

All right. So here's the dance to the butt faces. There you go. Throw some crowbars through windows.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

We do not condone throwing crowbars through police station windows uh if the FBI or NSA are listening.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

All right. Well, thank you, Gay. This was a great episode. It's good to be back, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 53:14

It is. It is very good to be back. Good. We'll see you at the next one. There you go. Awoogah.