About Forty Gavels

When Reuben Soderstrom visited the White House in 1962, President John F. Kennedy toasted, "I'll keep my speech short because I know Reub Soderstrom will demand equal time!"

Soderstrom's story is the gritty, hardscrabble story of labor itself: he toiled as a child worker in a blacksmith shop, carried water for trolley car operators, worked as a glass maker and also as a print shop typesetter, where he learned the power of ideas and words.

It is no coincidence that as he grew, so did the labor movement. Motivated by the working conditions he experienced and endured, Soderstrom was first elected to the Illinois statehouse and proceeded to become President of the Illinois AFL-CIO, an organization whose members elected him as their leader an astonsishing 40 years in a row, from 1930 to 1970, through the Great Depression and World War II.

This is his story.