IL Brokerage Store year end awards dinner

IL Brokerage Store year end awards dinner hosted by management at the DeSoto Hotel  in St. Louis, MO. This is just one table of the employees or husbands/dates of employees from Mt. Vernon who attended in December 1950.

Back row:
Lilly Parsons, Irma Standridge (head cashier for many years), Doris Casey, two IL Brokerage Staff members of St. Louis office, Bill Tom McGehee & friend.

Front Row:
Unidentified shoe department manager, unidentified lady employee, Leota Kinison, Jean Crowder, Lionel Harsbarger (husband of one of the employees), Lila Gerard & husband.

Bonus awards were given based on our individual sales for the year (and/or performance if one was a cashier). Often they gave gifts for outstanding performance (sales topping previous year's, etc) such as silverware, luggage, electrical appliances.

At this time, 1950, I remember they had 22 stores in the mid-west.

They were started by a Jewish immigrant, Papa Greenberg, who arrived in Chicago with just a scant few dollars in his pocket, who went to work in a clothing store. Through hard work and savings he bought his own store and the rest was history.

Their buyers went to the big clothing, shoe manufacturers, fabric manufacturers in the country buying close out's, seconds, samples, over runs, etc.

The stores were great places to shop for poor and moderate income families. Those days (in the late 40's) you could buy well known brand of shoes for $3.00 a pair, or less if you wore sample sizes.

My heart would literally bleed at the financial constraints of some of the customers. They would bring their children in to buy school clothes for the year. Most of the girls got two cotton dresses (or yardage to make them), one pair of shoes purchased really big for growing room, one cotton slip, a cheap coat and hat.

The boys usually got two pair of jeans, a shirt or two, one really big size of shoes for growing room and a cheap coat and hat. Some of the mothers would have the money tied up in a handkerchief (sometimes hidden down in her bra). This was probably egg money saved over the year.

We sold lots of yard goods as women sewed a lot in the 1940's and 1950's.

I remember my first pay envelope (paid by cash in those days), I made $2.45 for 8 hours of very hard work (after fifty cents taken out for union work permit).

When the east side of the square burned in December 1950 a lot of us stood on the courthouse lawn and watched and cried.

WMIX was broadcasting from the site. I can remember our wonderful old store manager, Mr. Jack  Bennett, with tears running down his face.

The best I recall the fire was started by a faulty furnace in a liquor store in the same block.

The IL Brokerage opened again in a building on 10th Street.

Because so many of our customers had their Christmas presents in Lay Away, we cashiers were asked to come in and try to identify people who did not have receipts so we could make some sort of adjustment to them.

Our regular customers became like friends and we tried to remember just what they had put in lay away.

Later, in 1951, when the store was in full operation our Retail Clerks were chosen to strike.

Glassmen's, The Mammoth and other stores were under the same contract but I guess they figured we old IL Brokerage clerks were tougher and could withstand the pressure of a strike.

I remember well someone standing on the roof of the drug store on the corner shooting a BB gun at the legs of our strikers who were picketing (most of us wore dresses in those days even on picket line). We didn't get much help from the Mt. Vernon police at that time. After that strike was over the head office of the company never treated us the same.

I don't know when the store left Mt. Vernon as I left in 1952 and I don't know if the Greenberg Corp. is still around.

Egg Day at IL Brokerage August 1950

This picture was taken August 1950 in front of the Illinois Brokerage store before that side of the square burned down in December of 1950.

On Egg Day, a big sale day in town, we clerks had to dress in jeans and chambray shirts. We were as tired as we look in this picture. This group of clerks worked in the bargain basement.

Those in the picture left to right front row are:
Jean Crowder, Roberta Bodine, Vivian Harsburger, Lila Gerard, Lily Parsons

Back row, left to right:
Doris Casey, Bill Tom McGehee, Leota Kinison

International Shoe Company
Union Dues Booklet of Ethel Lucille Crowder from 1943.

Note the dues were only twenty five cents per month.

The death benefits are laughable, only $300.00 if you died while a member.

Three pay slips from the shoe factory

Please note the small salary received and that was supposed to be a "good paying" job. Maybe it was for that day and age.

Also, note that in 1943, after the union organized the place, how the wages went up. Note the war bond deduction also.

International Shoe Company
Alma Flanagan, Wilma Russell, Juanita Brown

These ladies worked on the finishing line (polishing and inspecting the WAC's shoes before they were boxed) or referred to as the "treeing line".

The factory was not air conditioned and with all the machines running it could get up to 115 degrees in the summer. The ladies felt they were doing their part for the war effort.

For many of these women, my mother included, it was the first real job out of the home they had.

International Shoe Company

Ethel Lucille Crowder is in the second row (L - R) first person.
Others are unidentified.