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The Emerging Social Worker and the Distribution of the Castle Gate Relief Fund
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 50, 1982, No. 4
The Emerging Social Worker and the Distribution of the Castle Gate Relief Fund
BY MICHAEL KATSANEVAS, JR.
UTAH HAS BEEN THE SCENE OF TWO MAJOR mine disasters. On May 1, 1900, an explosion at the Winter Quarters Mine in Scofield killed 200 men. Less than a quarter-century later, 171 men were killed when an explosion rocked the Number 2 Mine at Castle Gate on March 8, 1924. In some ways, responses to the two tragedies were similar, but in other ways the assistance available to families of the dead miners differed significantly.
At Scofield neither state nor federal law provided help for the stricken community. The Pleasant Valley Coal Company, heavily criticized for the unsafe condition of its mine, voluntarily paid burial expenses, cancelled debts at the company store, and gave each family of a dead miner $500. In addition, $216,289.81 in donations was raised throughout the United States for the relief of the dead miners' dependents. With little data available, it would be difficult to assess the effectiveness of these voluntary relief efforts.
By the time of the Castle Gate disaster state legislation provided a measure of relief through workmen's compensation when injury or death occurred on the job. A detailed analysis of this legislation is not possible here, although a brief summary will be useful in setting the scene.
As early as 1912 Democrats and progressive Republicans had urged passage of a workmen's compensation law. Many Utahns had come to believe that "the common law rule that virtually freed an employer from responsibility in industrial accidents should be overridden." The 1913 and 1915 legislatures "considered workmen's compensation, but in 1915 passed the hot issue to a commission charged with preparing recommendations for the next legislature." The election of Democrat Simon Bamberger as governor in 1916, combined with a Democrat-controlled legislature, led to enactment of a number of progressive programs, including workmen's compensation to be administered by a newly created Industrial Commission. Although thirty other states had workmen's compensation before Utah, the law passed by the 1917 legislature "was one of the most stringent in the nation."
Significant for the victims of the Castle Gate disaster, the law, created a State Insurance Fund and provided the following death benefit to dependents:
Another section of the act provided for "reasonable" funeral expenses up to $150. In 1919 the legislature increased the death benefit to 60 percent of the weekly wage, not to exceed $16.00 per week, nor $5,000 total over six years. This, then, was the legal situation at the time of the Castle Gate disaster.
Two other equally important differences between the Scofield and Castle Gate relief efforts need to be discussed in greater detail because they represent a stage in the development of social welfare in Utah, a bridge between the voluntary aid offered at Scofield and the welfare establishment created by the federal government in response to the Great Depression. The first of these concerns the decision to disburse most of the Castle Gate Relief Fund contributions in monthly installments rather than lump sums. Second, a full-time welfare worker was hired to deal directly with the families of the dead miners. Her reports provide detailed information on the day-to-day problems of women and children struggling to adapt their lives to changed circumstances. Annie D. Palmer's background and training with the Red Cross gave her some useful skills, and she may be viewed as a transitional figure in the history of social service. It would take the crisis of the depression a few years beyond Castle Gate to spur the University of Utah to introduce professional courses for social workers and to establish the Graduate School of Social Work.
With Castle Gate, as with any disaster, the human element looms largest; the tragedy remains forever etched in the memories of those who lived through it. Fifty-six years after his father's death in the mine, Theodore Sargent clearly remembered the day:
It was 8:30 in the morning, Saturday, March 8, 1924. The Number 2 Mine of the Utah Fuel Company in Castle Gate, also known as the Willow Creek Mine, had exploded, killing 171 men. It would take a week for the disaster team to remove the last of the entombed miners.
Meanwhile, as the Price newspaper wrote, "The real immediate need of help at Castle Gate was for workers to give aid in the commonplace household tasks which could not be properly handled by the distracted womenfolks of the stricken homes." Women from the nearby communities rushed to the scene to help the grieving widows and their families. They heated milk for babies, cooked over open fires, and brought blankets to protect them from the early spring cold. 8 Local churches, the Red Cross, the American Legion Auxiliary, and the Salvation Army were among the organizations tendering aid. Simply arranging funerals and burials became an awesome task. The magnitude of the tragedy overwhelmed the small town and strained its resources.
On March 11 Gov. Charles R. Mabey appointed a committee to survey the situation of the widows and orphans: Imer Pett, manager of Bingham Mines Company, chairman, and committee members F. E. Hansen and Darrell T. Lane from Salt Lake City and Mrs. C. H. Stevenson and Carl Marcusen from Price.
The committee's classification of the miners' nationalities listed 72 Americans, 49 Greeks, 22 Italians, 8 Japanese, 7 English, 6 Austrians, 2 Scots, 2 Negroes, and 1 Belgian. Of these 171 men, 57 were single, 114 married. They left 417 dependents, including 241 children and 25 expectant mothers. Boys of sixteen and older and girls of eighteen and over were excluded from the enumeration of dependents.
The families of 143 men were left without income or assets. One family owned a small house; one widow worked as a schoolteacher. No information could be found about 26 of the men. Twenty-two of the men had private life insurance policies; eighteen of the policies ranged from $1,000 to $5,000, and the other four were for unknown amounts. This meant that only 64 of the 417 dependents had some source of income.
Dependents were presumed to be entitled to a maximum of $5,000, payable at $16.00 weekly, under Utah's workmen's compensation law. Being self-insured, an option under the law, the Utah Fuel Company was required to pay all compensation claims. The company assured the committee that it proposed to give the provisions of the law the most liberal interpretation. It placed store credit at the disposal of the families, provided fares for relatives to come to Castle Gate, arranged for the transportation of bodies, assisted families in moving elsewhere, and made cash advances in many cases.
The committee realized that the relief required by law provided only temporary aid and would be insufficient in most cases because of the gravity of the disaster. With so many men killed at once in so small a community, few friends or relatives could help each other. The families had experienced financial troubles before the explosion because the mines were not running at full capacity; miners had worked only two or three shifts a week, leaving many of them in debt.
The committee recommended to the governor that an effort be made to raise a fund by public donations to add to the sum legally due the dependents. On March 20, Governor Mabey signed a proclamation appealing to the people of Utah and surrounding states to come to the aid of the distressed widows and children. He urged a public subscription of not less than $100,000. He appointed a citizens committee on ways and means to raise the relief fund and authorized it to receive all contributions. He also named a committee to disburse the funds; it comprised three members of the Industrial Commission, a representative of Utah Fuel Comapny, a member of the Carbon County Commission, a representative of the Carbon County chapter of the American Red Cross, three representatives from the state at large, and, later, a social worker.
The response in the state was immediate. In Weber County alone $9,558.62 was collected. Donations came from the press, luncheon clubs, Boy Scouts, the American Legion, fraternal and civic organizations, ministers, churches, women's organizations, shopmen, banks, merchants, doctors, business and professional men and women, city and county officials, the typographical union, and Standard-Examiner employees. Members of the LDS church made a house-to-house canvass of Ogden and Weber County. The campaign in Weber County was emulated throughout the state. In the mining communities of Park City, Bingham, and Price, miners, always close to the threat of violent death, contributed generously.
After the money ($132,445.13) had been collected and deposited in local banks, Governor Mabey appointed the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee to oversee disbursement of the money: Imer Pett; G. L. Becker; M. A. Keyser; Mrs. C. H. Stevenson, a Red Cross official in Carbon County; Ferdinand Erickson, attorney for Utah Fuel Company; William M. Knerr, Nephi L. Morris, and O. F. McShane of the Industrial Commission; and Eugene Satschi, chairman of the Carbon County Commission. The committee met on April 30, 1924, and elected Pett as chairman; Becker, vice-chairman; McShane, secretary; and Keyser, treasurer. Later, Knerr, Morris, and McShane resigned, and Governor Mabey appointed J. T. Hammond, Jay H. Johnson, and H. F. Decke to fill the vacancies. In June, Hammond was named secretary of the committee.
On June 6 the most important member of the committee — Annie Palmer — was hired at $150 per month plus expenses. It was her duty to investigate persons or families asking for relief fund money and to report to the committee. The huge task of how and to whom the money would be distributed began, with the responsibility falling mainly on Mrs. Palmer.
Annie Palmer was born in Fairview, Sanpete County, in 1864. Educated at Brigham Young University and the Utah State Agricultural College, she had taught English at the former school. She entered social work in 1917 and served as executive secretary of the Red Cross, Utah County chapter, during the First World War. She received Red Cross training that enhanced her capabilities as a welfare worker. Married but childless, she was able to transcend the prejudice against working wives.
Mrs. Palmer's Red Cross background and that of Mrs. Stevenson, one of the committee members, may have affected the way the relief work was carried out, for in the early 1900s the Red Cross had begun responding to industrial disasters. A mine explosion at Cherry, Illinois, on November 13, 1909, in which 259 miners were killed, gave the organization its first experience in handling the relief effort for such a disaster.
As at Castle Gate, a large fund was established from contributions to aid the survivors, most of whom were of foreign origin. The disbursement of this fund closely resembles the approach used by Annie Palmer and the Castle Gate committee:
After five months of investigation Mrs. Palmer revised the original statistics of the explosion. Of the 172 men killed, 59 were single, 110 married, and 3 were widowers; 106 widows lived in America and 4 overseas; 18 of the widows had no dependents, 45 had either 1 or 2, and 44 widows had more than 2, making a total of 258 dependent children.
Before any relief could be allotted, families had to fill out application and questionnaire forms in triplicate, the original going to the secretary in Salt Lake City and copies to the treasurer and the subcommittee. Many of the immigrant families needed an interpreter to translate, write, and speak for them, and, some, for this reason, decided to return to former homes elsewhere in the United States or to their native countries.
Not all of the widows who applied for relief funds received them. Mrs. Palmer divided the dependents into three classes. In Class 1 she placed the more helpless families for whose special benefit the relief fund was collected. Most of these had four or more minor children and no insurance or other income except that provided by workmen's compensation. Almost all of these women were also in poor health and unaccustomed to carrying the heavy responsibilities of a home alone. They found it difficult to adjust to their husbands' deaths but made attempts for the sake of their children. Mrs. Palmer believed that these families would need assistance for a long time, for perhaps fifteen years. She estimated that they would need as much as $500 a month.
In Class 2 were smaller families with healthier, more competent women heading them. For these Mrs. Palmer recommended a lump sum of $100.00 for each dependent, or an average of $277.17 per family.
In Class 3 were families living in their native countries and widows without dependents or whose husbands had left them insurance. Unless their circumstances changed, Mrs. Palmer advised that they receive no relief money. On October 18 the committee voted to give no assistance from the fund to the eighteen widows who had no dependent children, lived overseas, had remarried, had insurance, or had transportation to their former homes.
At first, nine families wanted to return to their homelands in Italy and Greece. Many had tickets and had made final arrangements, but because of misunderstandings or a change of heart, four of the families decided to stay. Some members of the committee were disappointed and annoyed that these families refused to accept the generous transportation arrangements after they had made application for a return to their homelands. Mrs. Palmer explained the situation to the committee:
The women who did leave were full of joy and gratitude at being helped to return to their native countries. The two black families left Utah to return to relatives: the Willis family to Los Angeles and the Hendersons to Raton, New Mexico. Not all of the families were interested in going back home. Despina Sargetakis said that the opportunities for her children were not back on the small island of Crete but here in America.
Many widows with children were eager to settle for a lump sum of several hundred dollars and forfeit claim to any further aid. A report on April 4, 1925, showed that a majority of the women preferred to receive a single payment for their share of the $132,445.13. They signed a petition asking the committee to meet and make immediate distribution of the relief fund. However, the committee decided to hold the fund in the interest of the children and pay it out monthly as long as the money lasted.
No set formula governed the distribution of the fund. A monthly allowance was given to each family depending on its size. But if the family had an emergency and money was neded, the committee approved of payment in most cases. Emergencies included medical and dental bills, burial expenses for the mother of the four Seeley children, and school clothes and books. In some instances special allowances were made, as in the case of Viola Rollins who sent a telegram to Gov. George Dern:
The governor replied that the committee would determine if the family's allowance could be increased.
As the years passed, the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee dropped from its rolls many dependents who no longer appeared to need help. Many widows remarried, making them ineligible for further aid. However, before anyone was removed from the rolls the committee conducted a thorough investigation of the family.
The committee worked for twelve years until all of the fund was expended. During that time it spent only $12,445.13 for salaries and expenses. Mrs. Palmer drew a steady salary for a few years, then, as the demand for her services lightened, worked part-time. All members of the committee took their responsibilities seriously and felt a deep commitment to the welfare of the families even after the money had been completely disbursed. Especially involved with the dependents and giving freely of their time were the chairman, Imer Pett, until his death in March 1935; the secretary, J. T. Hammond; the treasurer, M. A. Keyser, who accounted to the committee without the loss of a single cent; and Mrs. C. H. Stevenson who made periodic visits to the families after Mrs. Palmer's death in 1932. During her eight years of service, Mrs. Palmer performed a monumental task as the social worker for the committee. Although some Castle Gate residents made accusations of fraud and embezzlement in the handling of the relief fund monies, those charges were never substantiated. What remains clear is that without the work of the committee and Mrs. Palmer in disbursing the relief fund, many families would have gone without adequate food and medical attention and many children without education.
As Mrs. Palmer made her rounds of the Castle Gate families, the townspeople learned to identify her by her garb, for she invariably wore a black dress and a black hat and carried a black umbrella. Forewarned of her imminent arrival, they "could either prepare to welcome her or hide from her when they saw the black figure coming down the street." Although there is evidence that some families did not care for her, many of the women eagerly awaited Annie Palmer's visits to tell her their problems. Some immigrant women were especially grateful to her. She had to contend, however, with American women like Mrs. H , who "was busy ironing. . . . Woman inclined to be cross. . . . Said she considered the questionnaire all rot and did not expect to ever get anything from Fund. In her opinion the millionaires will use it."
Annie Palmer's reports would be condemned by present-day social workers for their invasion of privacy, but her human feelings gave the committee an accurate basis on which to make decisions that would deeply affect the lives of widows and children. Whether a family's house was owned by them or by the coal company, whether a garden grew and chickens were kept, the condition of the children's clothing and teeth — all this and more was recorded by Mrs. Palmer. She took the Ambrosia children shopping for underwear and duly noted the cost, $23.62. She traced a family's furniture that had been waylaid for two months. She found temporary household help for pregnant, sick, and emotionally ill women.
To mothers who remained "helpless and broken hearted" and were unable to look for work outside their homes, she suggested remarriage. She wrote, perhaps with satisfaction, that Eirine Markakis had married again and that her husband's brother had given "a beautiful bedroom suite with pillows and silk coverlet and all for a wedding present."
Most widows immediately sought ways to help their children. Mary Katsanevas wanted a "big house from company, so she can take boarders." Despina Sargetakis, from whose Castle Gate house her husband and three of his relatives left on March 8 to die in the mine, wanted "a little place where she can have chickens and where there is room for the children to play. . . . She could not get enough money ahead to get a coat for herself; she seems to put all of it on the children." Teresa Aquilla asked "that she be assisted to purchase a 'homestead' for [herself] and children."
By today's standards Mrs. Palmer acted unprofessionally on occasion. For instance, she several times suggested to one widow with many children and poor health that she join the Mormon church to receive aid from that source. When a woman whose son had been killed complained to Mr. Palmer that his wife had "hurt her feelings in the letter written about relief fund [further money denied]," Mrs. Palmer immediately wrote Mrs. A , "explaining no offence [sic] was intended, etc." But often her methods were indirect:
Mrs. Palmer recorded the gossip she heard on each visit and often had to verify the truth if, as in the following report, the law was being broken:
The social worker's records do not show the outcome of the bootlegging investigation, but the malicious charge of Mr. H , who accused a widow of having enough money to buy a one-fourth interest in the Parisian Bakery, was proved false.
The gossip must have proved wearying, for in a letter to the committee, Mrs. Palmer wrote:
Throughout the volumes of case records, Annie Palmer's interest in the children remained paramount. When they appeared undernourished or their teeth needed attention or their tonsils looked inflamed, she made appointments with health care professionals, often taking the children herself and asking the doctors and dentists to be "lenient of charge." She unsuccessfully attempted to persuade a thirteen-year-old girl to return to school and not marry. When town officials were inclined to believe a rapist's story of innocence, she campaigned for and saw to his conviction for molesting a Greek orphan. Whatever her shortcomings, she was certainly something more than an anonymous bureaucrat dispensing funds.
The relief measures undertaken at Castle Gate illustrate a response to disaster that was fairly effective at serving a large number of people in a small community. The approach was systematic and generally fair, helping most those who needed the most help. If Mrs. Palmer sometimes lacked the finesse or discretion of today's social worker, she nevertheless had an abundance of heart; and, after all, she was challenged to take some of the first tentative steps in a profession that would reach maturity during the great economic crisis that loomed just ahead.
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