Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Strike, 1935

In 1935, Minneapolis was rocked by radical populist protests as workers responded to the Great Depression, unemployment, and anti-union employers. Industrial unions galvanized discontent and challenged employers, craft unions, and the Farmer-Labor Party. A year after the Teamsters union led combat in the market district of Minneapolis, another union struck eight foundries, including the Flour City Ornamental Iron Works on the city’s south side.

Flour City stood near rail yards and the Minneapolis Moline plant. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad had come to the Seward neighborhood in the late nineteenth century, attracting industry and jobs. Work was often dangerous and low paid, but workers might own small homes, and transient workers could room in boarding houses and hotels. The notorious Hub of Hell entertainment district was a stroll from Flour City and the Moline plant.

The skilled artisans and helpers who worked in the foundry made artful bronze and iron castings, and screens and doors for buildings. Immigrant owner Eugene Tetzlaff, who built the firm from a blacksmith shop, was a member and defender of the Minneapolis Citizens Alliance, which had kept the city union-free for decades. He made sure that Flour City remained union-free, too.

Machinists local union #1313 organized foundries amid Citizens Alliance spies and the firing of pro-union employees. The union was after wage increases, an eight-hour day, overtime, and union recognition. Tetzlaff adamantly refused to negotiate with the union, whose leaders he considered socialists and communists. The union struck Flour City on July 12, 1935.

The Minneapolis Labor Review reported that pickets were active and effective, and tentative settlements at other foundries emboldened strikers. The Minneapolis Labor Federation and affiliates added to picket numbers. But in late July, Mayor Thomas Latimer, a Farmer-Laborite elected in June, helped non-striking employees return to work. As employees left the plant, they were pelted with rocks and bottles. “Public sentiment is strongly with the strikers,” wrote The Labor Review, as numbers of protesters increased.

Tetzlaff and the Citizens Alliance continued to stoke fires in the newspapers. One half-sheet demanded that police take “…immediate steps to prevent gatherings of such a mob…and prevent recurrence of these riotous demonstrations….”

Latimer’s assistance to non-strikers, along with court restrictions on pickets and armed guards inside Flour City, put him at odds with union and Farmer-Labor faithful. With over 1,800 workers in job actions at twenty-one plants and construction sites in the city, the mayor was “…a great disappointment to the Farmer-Labor forces of the city,” The Labor Review later reported.

The violent end to the strike came in early September, when union pickets, Farmer-Laborites, neighbors, and gawkers in the thousands—along with hundreds of militant Teamsters—laid siege to the foundry. On September 10, 100 or more police assembled in squad cars, in armored cars, and on motorcycles.

Around midnight, someone started throwing rocks, and shots rang out. Armed with pistols and riot guns, the police drove the crowd away from the plant. They chased people down streets and alleys into yards and homes, but some regrouped and fought police hand-to-hand. The officers did not discriminate between pickets and spectators.

Two young passersby were shot to death, and twenty-eight were injured by bullets, clubs, and thrown objects. A truce of sorts occurred. The machinists pushed to have a Flour City federal contract awarded to another foundry, and Governor Floyd Olson closed the plant. Tetzlaff refused to recognize the union but agreed to wage increases, a forty-hour week, and overtime.

Mass meetings organized by Farmer-Laborites called for resignations of the mayor and police chief. The day after the riot, thousands of union members, Farmer-Laborites, and unemployed workers paraded down Nicollet Avenue demanding welfare relief. They were tear-gassed by the police. A special grand jury was convened to determine what caused the riot, but it laid no blame on the police. Mayor Latimer was not reelected in 1937.

In audacity, drama, and solidarity, the Flour City strike is eclipsed only by the teamster rebellion of 1934 and the Strutwear hosiery workers’ strike, also in 1935. The Flour City strike laid bare tensions within the labor movement and the Farmer-Labor Party, which lingered for years. But Machinists Local 1313 had organized a powerful industrial union, and delivered another blow to the Citizens Alliance influence in Minneapolis. Before federal government recognition of union rights and the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), “the abysmal conditions…across Minneapolis…provided the space for reawakening of radical protest.”