The Journal for MultiMediaHistory
Volume 1 Number 1 ~ Fall 1998

 

The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton, New York: The Story in Words and Pictures
Part III

Thomas J. Kriger

Part I
  •  Introduction

  •  Background

  • Part II
  •  The 1939 DFU Milk Strike

  •  Struggles in Words and Photographs

  • Part III
  •  Struggles to Close the Heuvelton Sheffield Farms Plant

  •  DFU's Struggle to Close Canton Milk Plants

  • Part IV
  •  Conclusion

  •  Postscript

  •  Acknowledgements

  •  About the Author
  •  Suggested Reading

  •  

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton. Photo #36
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    The Struggle to Close the Sheffield Farms Plant in Heuvelton

    In an effort to circumvent the DFU blockade, Sheffield Farms employees in Heuvelton mounted their own defense, sending out stake-rack trucks or closed vans to collect the milk of non-strikers. The milk was then delivered with a police escort. The first two photographs that follow show the different trucks used to circumvent the DFU picket line. In the third photograph, a plant employee unloads milk onto a ramp which is guarded by a law enforcement officer armed with a rather stout club (last photo below, far right foreground).

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade.

     

    Violence at the Sheffield Plant: Recollections of Two Farmers
    Playing time: 2 minutes, 59 seconds.

    Farmers recall violence at the Sheffield Plant: 14.4 kb/sec. 14.4 Kb/sec.
    Farmers recall violence at the Sheffield Plant:  28.8 kb/sec. 28.8 Kb/sec.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade.
     

    After four or five nights of continuous picketing, DFU farmers and other bystanders claimed that the manager of the Sheffield plant, accompanied by two employees, attacked DFU pickets with a baseball bat. This incident touched off two days of angry rioting which directly contradicted Wright's strict instructions to avoid violence. During the ensuing melee a local farmer named Charlie Anderson was shot and wounded by a plant guard; further violence included the destruction of windows in the plant, along with other company property within reach of DFU cobblestones. The photograph to the extreme left shows an injured DFU picket being carried from the plant. The one to the right shows the results of stone throwing by angry DFU pickets.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - circumventing the DFU blockade.


    Local law enforcement officers often found themselves in a difficult position during milk strikes. If they sided with the milk companies and arrested DFU pickets, they risked alienating their friends and neighbors. If they sided with the strikers, as they often did as long as the picketing was peaceful, the milk companies would go over their heads, calling on their allies in the governor's office and state legislature to mobilize the state police.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - police officer. Police and Farmers—Two Accounts.
    Playing time: 2 minutes, 16 seconds.

    Police 14.4 Kb/sec.

    Police 28.8 Kb/sec.


     

    The following four photographs show state police officers, armed with large clubs, guarding the daily milk trains and escorting milk tank trucks from the Sheffield Farms plant in Heuvelton. Milk processed at the Sheffield plant was shipped by rail to New York City.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - police officers. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - police officers.
    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - police officers. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - police officers.

    When the state police began escorting milk into and out from the Sheffield Farms plant in Heuvelton, the DFU switched tactics. On a few occasions, DFU farmers greased the rails leading out of the plant, which delayed the departure of the daily milk train. Here Sheffield employees accompanied by the police inspect the rails leading out of the Heuvelton plant.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - inspecting the rails.

     

    The DFU's Fight to Close Milk Plants in Canton, New York

    In Canton, the DFU had much greater success in closing the large Sheffield Farms plant. Here large numbers of DFU farmers and their supporters (first two photographs below) were peacefully and quickly able to dry up the plant in a manner more in keeping with Archie Wright's instructions to avoid violence. The third photograph (bottom, left) and the fourth (bottom, right) reveal the intense negotiations that typically took place between DFU pickets and drivers attempting to deliver their milk. They also show that after much discussion, most nonstriking farmers peacefully surrendered their milk. DFU pickets then took the milk off the trucks and dumped it by the side of the road.

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - DFU picketing. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - DFU picketing.
    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - DFU picketing. 1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton - DFU picketing.

     

    A Farmer Remembers Attempts to Block Archie Wright and the Dairy Farmers Union.
    Playing time: 2 minutes, 28 seconds.

    A 14.4 Kb/sec. A 28.8 Kb/sec.

     

    1939 DFU Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton.
    Sign on striker's car. 1939 photo
    by Fred Dashnaw, Sr. From
    Claudia Griffin and the author.
    Like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, one of the largest obstacles confronting the DFU was the powerful cultural stereotype of farmers as ignorant and backwards. The outcome of the 1939 DFU strike, however, suggested a different perception of farmers: that when pushed they could successfully fight back. As a sign on the back of a striker's car declared: "If we all pull together, & nobody kicks, We will show the dealers, We are not Hicks." (See photograph to the right).

    With the New York City milk supply cut by as much as sixty percent by the strike's third day, the DFU received welcome assistance from New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Hoping to avoid a milk shortage, the mayor called on the DFU and major co-ops and dealers to send representatives to a conference at the World's Fair grounds in Queens, where he hoped to broker an end to the strike.
    NEW YORK TIMES headlines
    Fiorello LaGuardia intervenes.
    New York Times, August 19, 1939.
    It was there on the strike's ninth day that Archie Wright and Harry Carnal, secretary-treasurer of the DFU, signed a strike settlement in which Borden's and Sheffield Farms agreed to increase farm milk prices, and, perhaps more importantly, to recognize the DFU as a powerful, regional dairy farmers' organization. Drawn up by LaGuardia, the pact called for the dealers to pay $2.15 for all milk purchased between August 25 and October 31, 1939; this forty-five percent price increase became official the next day when it was ratified at a jubilant DFU convention at union headquarters in Utica, New York.

    Farmers, editors, and merchants hailed the DFU's triumph across upstate New York. The Watertown Times pointed to "the overwhelming public support that the farmers received in their strike" as a significant factor in the union victory, and added: "The Dairy Farmers Union emerges on top. In few short years it has become the dominant organization throughout the entire milkshed. And why should this not be so? The union was formed as an organization of producers for the benefit of producers."[36]

    WATERTOWN DAILY TIMES
    Victory headline. Watertown Daily Times, August 22, 1939.
    In northern New York, local communities celebrated the union's victory. On August 23, Potsdam residents and merchants staged a celebration for DFU farmers. In Canton, two days later, nine hundred people marched in a mock funeral procession down Main Street complete with two coffins—one for the Dairymen's League, the other for the "Milk Monopoly."[37] Four hundred people joined the celebration in Malone; twenty-five hundred participated in Evans Mills. One thousand DFU supporters attended a victory parade at the firemen's festival in LaFargeville.[38]

    The largest DFU victory celebration occurred in Watertown, New York, on September 30. Union supporters organized a rally and parade complete with floats, a motorcycle escort, and high school marching bands. The Lewis County DFU organization sponsored a float upon which solemn, black-clad mourners grieved over graves bearing the names of the Big Three milk dealers. Following the parade, which the Watertown Daily Times called "the best of its kind ever held here," rain-soaked farmers and their supporters moved to the Watertown High School auditorium. They heard speeches from Archie Wright, Earl Latham, Jefferson County DFU chair; William T. Field, president of the Watertown Chamber of Commerce; Watertown Daily Times Editor Harold Johnson, and Congressman Francis Culkin of Oswego. Culkin accused Governor Lehman of "indifference to dairymen's needs," and called for "the abolition of both the bargaining agencies and the 'milk trust.'" Johnson called the DFU "a grassroots farmers' movement which won," and characterized Archie Wright as a "sturdy, resourceful, fighting Yankee."[39]

    Go To:
    Dairy Strike: Part I
  •  Introduction

  •  Background
  • Dairy Strike: Part III
  •  Return to top
  •  Struggles to Close the Heuvelton Sheffield Farms Plant

  •  DFU's Struggle to Close Canton Milk Plants
  • Dairy Strike: Part II
  •  The 1939 DFU Milk Strike

  •  Struggles in Words and Photographs
  • Dairy Strike: Part IV
  •  Conclusion

  •  Postscript

  •  Acknowledgements

  •  About the Author

  •  Suggested Reading
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    Notes for Part III:

    36. Watertown Daily Times, 22 August 1939, 4. [Return to text]

    37. Watertown Daily Times, 28 August 1939, 3. [Return to text]

    38. Watertown Daily Times, 29 August 1939, 6. [Return to text]

    39. Watertown Daily Times, 30 September 1939, 18; New York Times, 1 October 1939, 12. [Return to text]

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    ~ End Part III~

    To: Part IV
    The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton, New York:
    The Story in Words and Pictures
    Copyright © 1998 by the Journal for MultiMedia History.
    Contents: JMMH, Volume 1 Number 1 ~ Fall 1998