Steve Sumner at steel door pointing gun as he looks through peephole


                     "Steve's Battle for the Union"             		     		
                         by Mabelle G. Sparkes
                    Historical Method & Bibliography,
                      Dr. Snowbarager, May 5, 1960"

                 "STEVE'S BATTLE FOR THE UNION (Outline)

    Controlling Purpose:  This paper is to give a brief history of
Milk Wagon Drivers' Local 753 and to show how one man kept it from
becoming gangsterized.

    I.    Milk Wagon Drivers' Local was organized in 1903.

       A. Before the union the drivers worked eighty hours in the
          winter and one hundred hours in the summer.
       B. After unionizing deliveries were made from eight to five.
       C. Afternoon deliveries were abolished during the summer months.


    II.   In 1928 the Capone mob started to move in.

       A. Big Tim Murphy put the bite on Steve.
       B. George (Red) Barker kidnapped the union president.
          1. $50,000 was paid for his safe return.


   III.   Union troubles began in earnest in 1932.

       A.   Steve was visited by Murry (The Camel) Humphreys.
         1. Steve was offered $100,000. in cash to step down.
         2. Refusal meant a declaration of war.
       B.   The police and union prepared to fight.
         1. Special police headquarters were set up
         2. Union headquarters were made bullet proof.
         3. Steve's home was fortified.
         4. Samuel Insull's armoured car was purchased.


    IV.   During the next eight years Steve was protected 24 hours a
          day.

        A. He travelled 134,000 miles by armoured car.
        B. In 1939 he lost re-election by a five-vote margin.
        C. Steve donated the armoured car to the scrap
           pile during World War II.


    V.    Steve passed away on March 5, 1946.


                       STEVE'S BATTLE FOR THE UNION          		        

    Prohibition, Chicago gangsters figured, was on the way out.
Breaking the prohibition law had enriched them perhaps beyond the
dreams of any previous bandits or pirates in all human history.  Al
Capone was head of an organization of professional bootleggers
covering 20,000 spots in Chicago. They sold 25,000,000 pints of beer a
week.  It cost Al Capone $3.00 a barrel to make it as he owned his own
breweries, etc., and the sold it for $55.00 a barrel.  The closest
estimate of his payroll came to 2,000  and  he sold an average of 100,000
barrels a week, or $2,000,000 worth every seven days.   (1)

    What would they do after prohibition was repealed?  The idea of
the syndicate was to obtain some continued source of revenue, such as
booze had proved to be.

     "Get hold of the labor unions."  That was the idea which the wise
men of the syndicate devised.  And that is the idea they started
putting into force. They used gunmen, kidnapping, bombs, and threats
against unions and industry in Chicago just as desperately as they had
used these tools in dealing with each other during the beer wars.

    In 1928 the Capone mob had taken over many organizations. A
detailed account of this was given by the late Roger Touhy in a
Federal Court in September, 1952 when he testified before the late
Federal Judge John P. Barnes, while making his plea for freedom from
the penitentiary in Joliet.   (2)

    During this same year the Capone mob began to cast covetous eyes
on the Milk Wagon Driver's Union, which had a membership of 7,200, a
treasury of $1,000,000. and an annual income of $935,000.   (3)

    The Milk Wagon Drivers' Local 753, however, proved to be too much
for Capone and his mob. This was largely due to one man, the late Steve
Sumner, business agent and secretary-treasurer of the union since he
organized it in 1902.    (4)

    Steve Sumner was born September 9, 1864, in the little village of
Victoria, New Brunswick, Canada.  At the age of twenty-three he left
the village to seek his fortune, sailing down the St. John River on a
raft for 150 miles he landed at the city of Saint John.  From there he
soon travelled across the border into the State of Maine.  After
working for several months as a cobbler he made his way to Chicago by
horse & buggy, selling patent medicines along the way.   (5)

    Steve's first business venture in Chicago was the operation of a
street corner fruit stand which ended abruptly when a chilly breeze
from Lake Michigan froze his stock, representing his entire capitol.

    Eventually he landed a job driving a milk wagon and from that humble
beginning went on to build up a milk wagon drivers' union which, when
he retired, had over $1,000,000. in the treasury.

    His rise in Chicago labor unions was spectacular.  He attended


night school  and acquired a mastery of language.  His first speech was 		 
made from a soap box and his co-workers said he looked so young he was
wasting his breath.  He added seventeen years to his age and this stuck
with him until his death, Chicago papers giving his age as 96 instead
of 79.

    For several years Steve drove a milk wagon seven days a week for
the miserable wage of $12.00  per week.  The working week for the milk
driver in the winter averaged 80 hours per week, and in the summer 100
hours per week.    (6)

    Steve began to wonder what would happen when he would eventually
slow down and be discarded by his employers.  There were no pensions and
no social security.  In 1901 Steve began preaching unionism to his
fellow milk wagon drivers.  He quit his job to talk, to argue, to
canvass, but he was told he was foolish.  Still he kept preaching that
organization meant better wages, better hours, benefits, and savings.

    In the summer of 1902 with his own savings wiped out by a year of
unpaid evangelism among his fellow workers Steve had seventy-eight
signatures to his application with the American Federation of Labor
for permission to form a union.  The charter was granted and Steve
became the union's business agent, and secretary-treasurer.  The
dairy-men laughed, "If Steve and his men started any trouble, out they
would go. Plenty of labor was available, milk delivery didn't call for
brains.  To hell with Steve & his crazy union."    (7)

    A few weeks after the charter had been granted, early one morning
Steve passed a saloon outside of which stood a dejected- looking
horse, attached to a loaded milk-wagon.  Steve went inside, ordered a
glass of milk and looked around.  There was the driver of the wagon,
drunk; he was not a union member. "There are women and children waiting
for that load of yours," said Steve, walking up to the drunken driver,
"You are laying down on them, and what's more, you aren't fit to
deliver.  Get to hell out of here."   (8)

    The driver's reply was abusive.  Steve, broad-shouldered,
amazingly husky, grabbed the man and heaved him into the street. Then he
climbed aboard the milk-wagon, checked the delivery book, made the
rounds, and drove back to the dairy.   (9)

     "I made the delivery your driver was too drunk to make," he told
the astonished dairy man, "I'm the business agent of the new union.
What you do with him is none of our business now but I tell you that
when the time comes for him to join up, as it will for all your help,
he'll find it tough sledding if he hasn't changed his ways."    (10)

    That story circulated through the dairies and among the drivers,
too. Service was far from perfect; improvement meant better prices and
more business for employers. If Steve Sumner was going to make the
milk drivers behave, better men deserved better wages.  It got around
that Steve touched no liquor, nor even tea or coffee, nothing but
buttermilk or sweet milk. "Buttermilk Steve" they soon began to call
him.

    Within a few months after this incident the Union's membership had 		 
grown to about 700.  Then one day Steve went into a saloon just
outside the gates of a big dairy.  This was a hangout for drivers
before they started on their rounds.  A score of them were taking
their bourbon when Steve & two others walked in. Armed with sledge
hammers, they smashed the bar & the bottles.  "Liquor and milk don't
mix," roared Steve, as he herded the drivers out of the wrecked
saloon.   (11)

    The union prospered exceedingly. Its fixed rule of no drinking
commended it to employers, for drunken drivers were their biggest
headache. Steve, moreover, was a stickler for good behavior on duty in
other respects as well.  He demanded courtesy, service and promptness.
The delivery hours were now fixed from eight to five during the winter
months, and during the summer the afternoon delivery was abolished.  No
wagon was allowed on the streets after one in the afternoon during the
summer months.  A dozen years after its charter the union could boast
one hundred percent membership.   (12)
 
    For twenty-five years the union ran smoothly.  Steve believed that
the real job of a union was not to fight with employers but to come to
satisfactory and permanent terms with them, and that is what they did.
The drivers were happy and contented men.   In 1928 most of them were
making fifty dollars a week.  The delivery of milk in Chicago was
completely unionized. Each member paid into the treasury six dollars a
month or seventy-two dollars a year.  Out of the fund the union paid
benefits for sickness, unemployment, & other troubles that came to
working people.  In 1928 Steve was signing cheques for over ten
thousand dollars a month for members who were in trouble.  (13)

    Union rackateering had become a fine art in Chicago among the
gangsters.  Now they decided it was time to move in on Local 753.

    Big Tim Murphy, a number-one muscle-man, was facing trial for
participation in the Rondout mail robbery and needed $50,000. defence
money. He asked Steve for the money, but Steve said no. Next day two
cars drove by the milk drivers' headquarters at 220 South Ashland, and
poured hundreds of bullets into the offices. Nobody was hurt.  That
afternoon Big Tim repeated his demand. Steve said no even more
forcibly than ever. When he found that Steve could not be scared he
went after easier prey for his $50,000.   (14)

    But the milkmen's troubles were just beginning.

    Scarface Al Capone held himself somewhat aloof from union
rackateering, but he gave his underlings permission to do what they
wished if they found a chance for an easy killing, and Steve's union was
considered easy.  George (Red) Barker came to Steve and announced that
he had decared himself in. Steve told him where to go.  The fact that
Barker was armed didn't faze the union boss.  Barker went out but he
came back with bombs, and two were tossed into the milk drivers'
headquarters.  Chicago's mayor, Big Bill Thompson, believed in letting
these difficulties work themselves out, and so did his police force.
Half a dozen collectors and assistant business agents for the union were
slugged by Barker's roughhouse men.  Bullets from cruising gangster 		  
cars smashed more windows, but still Steve wouldn't surrender his
union to the mob.   (15)

    In the meantime, two other union leaders were killed by gangsters.
William Rooney, who had organized the building service employees, was
killed on the street in March, 1931.   (16)

    Also Patrick Burrell, who had the office on the floor above
Steve, and who was vice-president of the Teamster's Union, was taken
for a ride and shot to death.   (17)

    Then "Red" Barker tried other tactics.  He kidnapped the president
of the union, Bob Fitchie, who was Steve's closest friend.  "Send us
fifty thousand dollars," said the kidnappers. Steve notified the
police and members of the Chicago vigilante Secret Six which was headed
by Colonel Robert Ishan Randolph.  A night meeting was held with
various representatives of the vigilante bodies in the city, together
with police officials. This decision was reached:  "These fellows are
not bluffing.  The Milk Wagon Drivers' had better pay the fifty
thousand dollars."   (18)

    Steve dickered with the kidnappers & followed their instructions.
This is what happened:

    Steve put a package of fifty thousand dollars in bills on the back
seat of his car, covering it with a cloth.  The hour was about 3:30 in
the afternoon.  As he left the union headquarters, three strange cars
followed him, for the kidnappers, in the negotiations, had promised
him they would "protect" the money from other thieves from the time it
left headquarters until it fell into their hands.  Steve got a signal
from the following car to stop directly in front of a public school.
It was closing hour. Children were pouring out through the doors,
across the schoolyard and along the sidewalks. Steve got out of his car 
and walked away from it. School children were all about him.  The three
cars stopped and a man got out of each car.  Two of the men were
carrying banjos (sub-machine guns). The third man went to Steve's car,
opened the rear door, took the package of money and they went back into
their cars and hurried away.  All this was done in the midst of hundreds
of school children.  A shot could not have been fired without killing
some child.   (19)

    The union president was returned to his home that night, unharmed,
but a shaken man.  Although Steve yielded to extortion to save his
friend from harm, he nevertheless had held the gangsters at bay.
Barker was mowed down by machine guns a few weeks after he presumably
received his share of the ransom.   (20A)

    The Chicago mob kept after Steve and finally in the summer of 1932
they decided to defeather the old man for all time.  Capone had gone
to prison leaving Frank (The Enforcer) Nitti and Murry (The Camel)
Humphreys to share overlordship. Prohibition was doomed and the boys
needed a new source of profit.  The rich Milk Wagon Drivers' Local 753
stood at the top of the list of prospects.   (20B)
                                  						   
    Steve noticed that all of a sudden outsiders were mixing in among 
their	 men at headquarters.  One day he counted as many as nine men
known to be gangsters in the building at one time. And then one day a
delegation of hoodlums descended on union headquarters at 220 South
Ashland, a solid old brick mansion said to have been built by Long
John Wentworth, one of the city's earliest mayors.  Humphreys had a
notable list of killers with him, "Three-finger" Jack White,
"Klondike" Mike O'Donnell, Frankie Diamond (Capone's brother-in-law),
James "Fur" Salmon, and Marcus "Studs" Looney. Steve wasn't there when
they threw open the door & confronted Ray Bryant, the union cashier.

     You tell that old so-and-so," announced "The Camel" Humphreys,
"that next time we come loaded for bear; we're taking over this
joint."    (21)

    The next time they came Steve was waiting for them. The following
is how he told the story under oath in a federal court:

    Two men were waiting to see me.  One was Murray (The Camel)
Humphreys and the other Frankie Diamond.  I could see their guns
protruding from under their shoulder blades. Humphreys started off and
made me several propositions.  First off, he wanted to take into the
union a dairy the boys were operating themselves (the Meadowmoor
Dairy).  He went on to say that the boys all knew they would be out of
luck when prohibition was gone and legal beer back and that they needed
steady income. He said he didn't see why the dairy business couldn't
pay almost as much as the old beer business.  I told him I wasn't
interested.  I said I wouldn't supply union drivers for hoodlums and
that he was wasting his breath talking to me.  Then he said he would
cut me in for a share of all the profits if I would go along.  Then he
said he would run the drivers' union along with the mob.  I said I
would not. "Don't you shake down the dairy companies?" he asked.  I
said of course not, nor would I have anything to do with such a
course. Humphreys said a few sticks of dynamite would make them come
across & pay plenty.  Then he offered me $100,000. in cash to get out
and give them the union.  I said no.  "Well, then," he said, "we'll take
it from you."  (22)

    That was a declaration of war & Steve knew it.  After the men left
Steve told the Chief of Police and others in authority what had
happened. Chief of Police Shoemaker immediately rented the building
across the street from union headquarters, and set up a special police
headquarters for use during Steve's crisis, and established solely to
protect his life.  He established a troop of his youngest and most
daring marksmen.  They had machine guns, motor cars, shielded
motorcycles, bombs, and all the equipment of gang and anti-gang warfare.
They had orders to shoot any gangster on sight.  (23)

    During this same time union headquarters was being fortified.  The
outside walls were brick and they chose five rooms for Steve's fort.
The walls for these five rooms were lined with steel, and the windows
were covered with a bullet proof steel-wire screening of double
thickness.  The doors leading into the rooms, and the doors separating   
each room were of steel.  There was a speakeasy lookout shutter at                  
eye-level in each door. When the shutter was raised bullet proof glass
could be seen.  Below the speakeasy shutter there was another
aperture, circular, in each door, about two and one-half inches in
diameter.  There was no glass in this, but a little steel trapdoor
that opened outward.  This smaller hole was at the level of a man's
heart.  One could stand at the door, look a man straight in the eye
through the glass, and  put a bullet through his heart through the little
porthole.  The porthole was lined with a sound-deadening leather, as
was the inside of the little trapdoor.  A man outside could not hear
any careless touch of a gun against steel if a weapon were hurridly
thrust through the hole.  Any one of a dozen buttons in the five
steel-walled rooms would send alarms ringing in the special police
headquarters across the street.  To get an appointment with Steve it
was necessary to clear your credentials through Colonel Robert Isham
Randolph, head of Chicago's vigilante Secret Six.   (24)

    Steve fortified his home at 7348 Constance Avenue in the same
fashion. Samuel Insull had fled to Greece following the crash of his
utilities empire so the union bought his armoured car for $2100.  It
had steel lining with bullet proof windows, and its sides were studded
with port holes for rifles.   (25)

    Then from his armoured fortress, his armoured car, and his armoured
home Steve Sumner sent word to the boys to come and get it.  He spent
the next eight years with a twenty-four hour guard around him.  He was
guarded while he worked in steel-lined rooms, traveled to and from work
in an armoured car, escorted by four motorcycle policemen, and he was
even guarded in his own home while he slept.

    But gangsters wouldn't fight, in the open, that is. There were
sluggings of agents, bombings of milk deposits, shooting of drivers,
but no open frontal attack.   (26)

    For eight years Steve drove around in his armoured car, collecting
dues, addressing meetings, and running his union. With his armed
chauffeur, and his armed bodyguard, he travelled 134,000 miles.
Capone's hoodlums finally gave him up as too much trouble.  (27)

    William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor
during this time of crisis wrote:  "Steve Sumner fighting against
rackateers in Chicago portrays the heart and spirit of organized labor
toward this form of criminality."   (28)

    In 1939, believing Steve to be eight-nine years of age, (he was
actually seventy-two), the union voted a younger man into office.
Steve lost by a five vote margin. For the next few years he was an
organizer and lecturer and acted on mediation boards.  (29)

    Steve kept his little picked army of expert marksmen until the
Second World War came along.  In November, 1942 he donated his
armoured car to a scrap pile.  "Melt it down into bullets," he said,
"and use it on hoodlums who no matter how bad they may be will at least  
stand up to you and fight."   (30)		

    When Steve retired he handed over to honest, competent men, one of
the wealthiest unions in the country and one which through him had done
as much for the working men as any other organization of its kind.
When he passed away on March 5, 1946, policemen had to stay at his
home for ten days to move the line of sympathizers.  (31)

    Steve was a soft touch, and may have been a rich man if he had been
more thrifty or if he had been just a wee bit corrupt, but he wasn't
that type. What money he made over living costs for himself, his wife
and daughter was either spent on union business or loaned out or given
to anyone who needed it or said he needed it.  He often loaned money
to people he hardly knew, anyone with a hardluck story, especially if
it involved children.  Ninety per cent of these loans, officials of
the union say, were unpaid at the time of his death.  His widow has
numerous notes running into thousands of dollars, all unpaid. Steve
never tried to collect, and she says she never will either.   (32)

    Steve detested smoking so much that he often pulled a cigar or a
cigarette out of the mouth of a total stranger; then he would remember
to apologize and usually rip a five dollar bill from his roll to make
amends. None of his men was allowed to smoke in his presence.  Even
at large union meetings where hundreds would be in attendance smoking
was not allowed at any time.

    Steve's battles were both verbal and physical, but he never held a
grudge, not even against the mob.  He had no real personal enemies
although he made many business enemies. Even these, however,
remembered to write letters of condolence and sympathy to his widow
after his death.  She received thousands of letters, telling her how
much they admired the old bruiser.

    Steve was built like a barrel, about five feet, seven inches tall,
and always weighed around two hundred pounds.  He was as strong as a
bull and when he lost his temper he could curse better than any of his
drivers.

    Many union officials saw their boss tackle much bigger men than
himself and heave them bodily out of the way.  Once a Greek wrestler,
six feet two inches tall, and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, 
sent to the union headquarters by the Capone mob to make trouble, pushed
his way into the corridor past the guards.  He was shouting about what
he would do if he did not get satisfaction for an imaginary wrong.
Steve came roaring out of the office to confront the Greek, hands on
hips.  The man took one look at the union boss and his determined stance
and went for his gun.  Instead of diving at him, Steve threw back his
head and laughed.  The Greek was dumfounded by such tactics and as he
stood there, Steve walked up to him, snatched away his gun, picked him
up bodily and threw him down the nine steps to the street.

    Steve knew just about everybody in Chicago and just about everybody
knew him, from the mayor down to the bums on west Madison Street.                               
Thousands knew him as "Uncle" Steve.  After his death characters from		
all walks of life came to tell his widow how "Uncle" Steve had paid
their doctor bills, or found them jobs, or paid overdue rent.

    Steve belonged to no church although he sometimes attended
services whenever the notion took him, then he would march into the
nearest house of prayer, regardless of the denomination.  His
religion, he once told his wife, was to make a better world for his
fellow men the best way he knew how.  He certainly did all he could do
to that end in the milk business. Reminiscing before his death, he
said, "There was slavery in this sort of living before we formed the
union; we worked eighteen to twenty hours a day for twelve dollars a
week.  I hopped on and off a milk wagon for more years than I care to
remember, and I used to figure on four out of every twenty-four hours
for sleep. I'm against all forms of slavery, be it the slavery of the
booze bottle or the slavery of toil.

    I defy anybody to prove that I ever did any slugging unless I was
slugged first.  Yes, I've beaten up milk drivers when I found them
drunk or drinking on the job. Milk  is like the mail only more
important; it has gotto go through."   (33)
                     _________________________

    1.  Colonel Robert Isham Randolph, "How to Wreck Capone's
        Gang," Collier's, LXXXVII, (March 7, 1931), 7-9
    2.  Wayne Thomis, "Touhy story of union raids," The Chicago
        Daily Tribune, (January 12, 1960)
    3.  William G. Shepherd, "If it isn't booze, it's something
        else," Collier's (Nov. 26, 1932) p.7.
    4.  Selig Perlman, History of Labor in the U.S., p.64
    5.  D. S. Haywood, personal interview, Calumet City, Ill.
        April 9, 1960.
    6.  Perlman, loc. cit.
    7.  W. A. S. Douglas, "Too tough for Capone," American Mercury
        (Oct., 1946), pp. 456-461
    8.  Ibid.
    9.  Ibid.
    10. Ibid.
    11. Ibid.
    12. Ibid.
    13. William G. Shepherd  loc. cit.
    14. W.A.S. Douglas         loc. cit.
    15. William G. Shepherd   loc. cit.
    16. Wayne Thomis           loc. cit.
    17. William G. Shepherd   loc. cit.
    18. Ibid.
    19. Ibid.
    20. W. A. S. Douglas     loc. cit.
    20. Douglas                   loc. cit.
    21. Ibid.
    22. William G. Shephard  loc. cit.
    23. Ibid.
    24. Ibid.						     
    25. William E. Somers, personal interview, Chicago,
        27 Mar. 1960
    26  W. A. S. Douglas     loc. cit.
    27. Ibid.
    28. Shepherd, op. cit., p.7
    29. Charles Allen, "Editorial, Colorful Steve Sumner
        passes." The (Hartland) Observer, April 17, 1946
    30. Douglas, loc. cit.
    31. Ibid.
    32. Ibid.
    33. Ibid.
                                ***

    Mabelle Haywood-Sparkes prepared this article at University of
Illinois when she obtained her Masters Degree.  She has given her
niece, Etta Haywood Faulkner, permission to include this work in her
SOMERS Family Tree.

    Steve's great-nephew, Don, says that the reason Steve changed his
name from SOMERS to SUMNER was because he did not want his wife-to-be,
Clara Farris, to know that he had been in penitentiary.  See the other
version of why he changed his name in article by his great-niece,
Mabelle, which was that when Steve Somers was involved with the Milk
Union in Chicago against the Al Capone gang, Steve was afraid that the
gangsters would harm his family - his brother, George Allister Somers,
who was then working in Detroit but was from Victoria Corner, New
Brunswick.  Steve asked George to change his name & when George would
not do so, then Steve SOMERS changed his own name to SUMNER to protect
his family from possible retaliation from Al Capone.





    In 1935 Don, his brother Rex & daughter Etta were chauffeured
around Chicago in Steve's armoured car which had glass an inch and a
quarter thick.  Steve's great-nephew, Roy Heywood, was his chauffeur 
and when Steve's headquarters were under police guard, Roy walked up 
to the office door but was stopped by the police.  He told him Steve 
was his uncle.  The police escorted him up to Steve's office.  Steve
roared with laughter, saying yes, this was his nephew!






Stephen Currie SOMERS