Ben Robinson Grew up in Springfield MA, and arrived in New York City in the summer of 1929 immediately after graduating from the Yale Law School. He found employment with Manfred W. Ehrich, counsel to the United States Printing and Lithographic…
This interview takes place in two parts. In part I Williams discusses how he came from a family that believed deeply in the labor movement, losing his job in the lithographic trade on numerous occasions for organizing activity, and how he began his…
Leon Wickersham began his career in Lithography working for the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1948 he moved to Racine, Wisconsin, to work for Western Publishing Company as a stripper in the lithography department. His first experience in…
Jack Wallace entered the lithographic industry after the Second World War as a litho artist, cameraman, and finally superintendent of a plant in Kansas City, Missouri. He describes the lithographic industry as it thrived in Kansas City; he describes…
Edward Volz, President of the Photoengravers’ Union from 1929-1954, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was apprenticed to a wood engraver at the age of fifteen and joined the Photoengravers Union at twenty-one when it was still part of the…
Roy Turner was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1917 and began his career in lithography during the depression years. The Second World War and his active service in the Air Force interrupted his career temporarily. In 1956 Turner was elected full-time…
Dan Streeter started in the engraving business in 1930 and joined Chicago Local 5 of the Photoengravers Union in 1936. He gives the reasons for the organization of his own particular shop and describes the organizing campaign that took place under…
This interview takes place in three parts. Part I discusses Stone’s early years in Wisconsin, attending the University of Wisconsin, and working as a stripper in a Lithography shop. In 1940 Stone became recording secretary of his local union in the…
This interview takes place in two parts. In part I Harry Spohnholtz recalls his interest in printing and working at printing shops in Chicago in the 1920’s. Spohnholtz joined the ALA in 1929 and during the hard years of the depression, he changed…
Born in 1918 in Chicago and beginning his career in lithography as a dot etcher, William A. Schroeder became a member of Local 4 of the ALA in 1942. Schroeder describes the local union during the period of the forties and fifties and describes the…