Ten children were born to them, of these six are living.
[2]Theodore, the only brother, well known as an ardent Socialist and
tireless worker for the cause, has always been and is very close and
very dear and helpful to “Gene” in all his work. There are four sisters
and only a few years’ difference in the ages of all of them; they make
the ideal family group. The father did not long survive the mother, she
departing this life April 29, 1906, and he following her November 27,
1906.
This family grew up where there were no jealousies and where love was
not only felt, but expressed in acts of service and of sacrifice.
Sincere affection gives insight, intuition, understanding, and equips
for service and shuts out greed and degrading ambition for place and
power.
The stories of his childhood and few school years are replete with human
interest and would take much space to fully record. From the beginning,
the law of his life was work, but he was equally zealous in all the
plays and sports of childhood. There were many children and much to do
to support them, so his school years were short and ended with his
graduation, with credit, from the Old Seminary School in Terre Haute,
where the Indiana State Normal School now stands. In May, 1870, he began
to work for the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad Company (now
Pennsylvania System) first in the shops and later as a locomotive
fireman.
He worked continuously until October, 1874. The mother could not conceal
the tears of fear in her eyes when, with lantern in hand, he kissed her
to go out over the unballasted prairie railroad. So when he was offered
a position by Herman Hulman, of the Hulman & Cox grocery house at Terre
Haute, he accepted and filled all requirements until September, 1879,
when he was elected city clerk. He served in that office four years. He
had joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen when it was first
organized at Terre Haute. He had organized the Brotherhood of Railroad
Brakemen, now the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen; had helped to
organize the Switchmen’s Mutual Aid Association, the Brotherhood of
Railway Carmen, the Order of Railway Telegraphers and other labor
unions, and at the Buffalo convention, in 1878, he was made associate
editor of the Firemen’s Magazine, and in July, 1880, was appointed Grand
Secretary and Treasurer, and Editor and Manager of the magazine, serving
in the former capacity until February, 1893, and in the latter capacity
until September, 1894.
At the time he took charge of the affairs of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen the order had only 60 lodges and $6,000 debt. In a
short time he had been able to add 226 lodges and had wiped out the
debt. No such demonstration of love and pathetic regret had ever been
known in a national gathering of citizens as that which was shown to him
when the order, after having exhausted all efforts of persuasion,
reluctantly accepted his resignation from these offices of the order.
When he resigned from these offices he was receiving $4,000 per year. It
was at the Cincinnati convention, 1892, he tendered his resignation,
which was unanimously refused; he was unanimously re-elected to all the
offices previously held. He again tendered his resignation and insisted
upon its acceptance, with the frank statement that “organization” should
be broad enough to embrace all the workers, and that he desired and
proposed to give all his energy to the building up of such an
organization. The convention unanimously voted to give him, as a mark of
appreciation, $2,000 for a trip to Europe, for rest and enjoyment; this
he declined. Finally, after unyielding insistence, his resignation from
the several offices was accepted, taking effect as above stated.
With the assistance of a few others he organized at Chicago, in June,
1893, The American Railway Union, and his salary was fixed at $75 per
month. During the last two years of the organization’s existence he drew
no salary at all. His further motives for his action in resigning from
the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen to organize the A. R. U. cannot be
better told than in his own words uttered by him at the time:
“I do this because it pleases me, and there is nothing I would not do,
so far as human effort goes, to advance any movement designed to reach
and rescue perishing humanity. I have a heart for others and that is why
I am in this work. When I see suffering about me, I myself suffer, and
so when I put forth my efforts to relieve others, I am simply working
for myself. I do not consider that I have made any sacrifice whatever;
no man does, unless he violates his conscience.”