"Chasing scabs"

The news-worthiness of the story is the difficulty of a young woman's significant choice--church or union. Then again, for her the question was not so much a choice as a position the church had pushed her to when it posed that question: what will it be, Miss Beatrice Phillips (who was barely "of age," just 18 years old)--your membership here in Third Kalamazoo Christian Reformed Church, or your membership in the labor union that had stuck a local company that made corsets--yes, the female variety. The consistory, decisively, made their position clear.

Beatrice Phillips lost her job at the factory because she'd likely made no particular secret of joining the union. When the strike at the corset factory ended, she was fired for being an active member of the union. Working conditions at the factory were less than humane, she said, so she joined the strikers, "working to better those conditions and for the uplift of humanity in every way," or thus she explained it in a letter to the church consistory, a letter that detailed her determination to walk away from the church where she'd been raised.

After her firing from the factory, she traveled to Iowa and began working for the union at factories related to the Kalamazoo company where she'd got the pink slip. That's when the church sent her a letter detailing the church's criticism of her work. 

The consistory. . .has been informed that you are in Davenport, Iowa, working on behalf of a union to interfere with the work of a company that is doing or attempting to do business in that city. We have heard that the nature of your work is such that it may be called "chasing scabs." If such is the case, we, the consistory, feel that is our duty to warn you and kindly ask you to cease it. It will be for your own benefit if you do so.

They added this:

You must not forget that you are a member of this church and you must let your light shine before men to glorify God who is in heaven.

Apparently, to the consistory at least, working for a striking union was not "letting your life shine before men." Faced with the choice Third Kalamazoo had created, Beatrice Phillips walked out of the church. "You undoubtedly know," she wrote them, "that the factory's working conditions were horrible." And more:

I am not working in this union for myself alone, but for the wage slaves in this factory and many more. For what benefits one will always benefit others in time, as we are uniting to better conditions and we are progressing in spite of some people who are working for our downfall. 

With that she was out of the church and in with the union. 

I do not want you to think that I am disgusted with religion, for my belief in Christianity is the same. And I intend to live as good a life as I know how to life, but I am disgusted by the tactics they are using in that church, therefore I cannot be a member.

The original "cease and desist" letter from the consistory is signed by "J. C. Schaap (Minister)." 

The year was 1911. J. C. Schaap is/was my grandfather.

I'll have more to say tomorrow.

______________________________ 

You can find the story here-- https://scontent.fdsm1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/273010111_669739877796835_3965204844466307832_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=xw6uF0xGzLoAX-oc8an&_nc_ht=scontent.fdsm1-1.fna&oh=00_AT9oUDkwnoWxybH48WicYxKb1uoAWMVC3OkQ-lBKch0gCA&oe=6212C5A6