Labor Temple

-from the Wheeling News-Register, February 10, 1935, Page 10. © Ogden Newspapers; reproduced with permission.
 

Labor Temple

LABOR TEMPLE IS MONUMENT TO ADAGE "UNITED WE STAND."

Organization Fifteen Years in New Home.

Played Prominent Part in Dedication of Pollack Shrine.

Sattler President.

Is Clearing House for Labor's Ills; Hold Many Meetings.

The Ohio Valley's clearing house for labor's difficulties this year is observing its fifteenth anniversary in its home at 1506 Market street, Wheeling. It is the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor assembly; an organization made up of around 5,000 members representing 27 different crafts, members who place the inviolacy of the union next, almost, to the constitution. It is at the assembly hall that organized carpenters, painters, printers, state employees and on and on gather for their meeting, thrash out their problems. In fact, it stands as a symbol of the adage, "United We Stand; Divided We Fall."

Comittee Pushed Plan

The assembly moved into its present quarters in 1920, although the organization antedates that by around 40 years. A group of the leaders, knowing that the organization should have a home of its own, gazed long and often out of the windows of the quarters, then on the west side of Market street between Fourteenth and Sixteenth street, to the site directly across.They agreed that there was the ideal spot, and putting action to the thought they lost no time in "getting things going." Committee appointed by the members to go ahead with plans for the building was made up ofW.B. Hilton, W. L. Cumberlidge, W. L. Fritz, Louis Leonard, William F. Hahne, Sam R. Lenkard, J.M. Peters, Paul Mink, Thomas V. Salisbury and Joseph B. Rose. Present officers of the assembly are: Charles Sattler, president; Frank J. Healey, secretary and treasurer; M. J. Finley, Edward Real and John Ulrich, trustees, and Ralph Young, Charles Winesberg and Charles Schnelle, members of the finance committee.

Monument to Employee

All crafts which are a part of the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. One of Labor's great friends in Wheeling and the Ohio valley was the late Augustus Pollack, a union man from stretch and there were none of his stogies but what bore the stamp of the union. So, in appreciation for what Mr. Pollack had done for labor the local labor unions did something to commemorate him. As a result, the world's only memorial monument to an employer, erected by union labor, is located in Wheeling. It is the Pollack memorial, located at Chapline and Fifteenth streets in the yard of the city-county building property. The part that the Ohio Valley Trade and Labor Assembly played in the erection of the monuments well known. At a meeting of Garfield local No. 1, National Stogie Makers League shortly after the death of Mr. Pollack, founder and head of the Augustus Pollack Stogie company, in the early part of May,1906, George W. Kaiser, a member of a committee to devise ways and means for the purpose of having a public monument erected in honor of Mr. Pollack, the committee to have full power to carry out the project, with explicit understanding that no contributions should be accepted from any source outside of organized labor.

Commite Personell

This resolution was adopted by the stogie makers unanimously and like action was taken by the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly. The following committe was then appointed by William Welch, who was then assembly president: Mike Mahoney, L. W. Selvy, John Minkemeyer, Henry Wessel, H. P. Corcoran and William F. Welch. It was the Ohio Valley group that put the memorial drive over the top, because when the campaign was on for funds for the memorial, the drive was falling short and local labor stepped in and gave enough to assure completion of the plans for the monument.

Organizations  |  Places of Wheeling Home  |  Wheeling History Home  |  OCPL Home