SOMERS CONFRONTS AL CAPONE 





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



"Steve's Battle for the Union" 

by Mabelle G. Sparkes

Historical Method and 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, Chicato 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 sold
    it for $55.000 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. 

    What would they do after prohibition was repealed?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. 

    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. 

    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. 

    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 and 
    buggy, selling patent medicines along the way. 

    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. 
 
    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. 

    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 and his crazy union."  

    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." 

    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. 

    "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."  

    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 and two others walked in.
    Armed with sledge hammers, they smashed the bar and the bottles.
    "Liquor and milk don't mix," roared Steve, as he herded the
    drivers out of the wrecked saloon. 

    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. 

    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, and 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. 
    
    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. 
 
    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. 

    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."
 
    Steve dickered with the kidnappers and 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. 

    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. 

    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. 

    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 and 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." 

    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. 


    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.  

    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." 

    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. 

    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.

    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."

    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) page 7. 
    4. Selig Perlman, History of Labor in the U.S., page 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. 



Steve Sumner 

*******


       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.





c1928:  Steve Somers's 7-passanger car, 
Roy Heywood was his chaufeur. 
Steve bought that suit for Roy to go to school in 
but Roy wouldn't stay in School

       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 SOMERS CONFRONTS AL CAPONE