Part I  Introduction  Background Part II  The 1939 DFU Milk Strike  Struggles in Words and Photographs Part III  Struggles to Close the Heuvelton Sheffield Farms Plant  DFU's Struggle to Close Canton Milk Plants Part IV  Conclusion  Postscript  Acknowledgements  About the Author  Suggested Reading

The Struggle to Close the Sheffield Farms Plant in Heuvelton

In an effort to circumvent the DFU blockade, Sheffield Farms employees in Heuvelton mounted their own defense, sending out stake-rack trucks or closed vans to collect the milk of non-strikers. The milk was then delivered with a police escort. The first two photographs that follow show the different trucks used to circumvent the DFU picket line. In the third photograph, a plant employee unloads milk onto a ramp which is guarded by a law enforcement officer armed with a rather stout club (last photo below, far right foreground).

Violence at the Sheffield Plant: Recollections of Two Farmers Playing time: 2 minutes, 59 seconds. 14.4 Kb/sec. 28.8 Kb/sec.

Police and Farmers—Two Accounts. Playing time: 2 minutes, 16 seconds. 14.4 Kb/sec. 28.8 Kb/sec.

The following four photographs show state police officers, armed with large clubs, guarding the daily milk trains and escorting milk tank trucks from the Sheffield Farms plant in Heuvelton. Milk processed at the Sheffield plant was shipped by rail to New York City.

In Canton, the DFU had much greater success in closing the large Sheffield Farms plant. Here large numbers of DFU farmers and their supporters (first two photographs below) were peacefully and quickly able to dry up the plant in a manner more in keeping with Archie Wright's instructions to avoid violence. The third photograph (bottom, left) and the fourth (bottom, right) reveal the intense negotiations that typically took place between DFU pickets and drivers attempting to deliver their milk. They also show that after much discussion, most nonstriking farmers peacefully surrendered their milk. DFU pickets then took the milk off the trucks and dumped it by the side of the road.

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Sign on striker's car. 1939 photo by Fred Dashnaw, Sr. From Claudia Griffin and the author.

Like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, one of the largest obstacles confronting the DFU was the powerful cultural stereotype of farmers as ignorant and backwards. The outcome of the 1939 DFU strike, however, suggested a different perception of farmers: that when pushed they could successfully fight back. As a sign on the back of a striker's car declared: "If we all pull together, & nobody kicks, We will show the dealers, We are not Hicks." (See photograph to the right).

With the New York City milk supply cut by as much as sixty percent by the strike's third day, the DFU received welcome assistance from New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Hoping to avoid a milk shortage, the mayor called on the DFU and major co-ops and dealers to send representatives to a conference at the World's Fair grounds in Queens, where he hoped to broker an end to the strike.

Fiorello LaGuardia intervenes. New York Times, August 19, 1939.

It was there on the strike's ninth day that Archie Wright and Harry Carnal, secretary-treasurer of the DFU, signed a strike settlement in which Borden's and Sheffield Farms agreed to increase farm milk prices, and, perhaps more importantly, to recognize the DFU as a powerful, regional dairy farmers' organization. Drawn up by LaGuardia, the pact called for the dealers to pay $2.15 for all milk purchased between August 25 and October 31, 1939; this forty-five percent price increase became official the next day when it was ratified at a jubilant DFU convention at union headquarters in Utica, New York.

Farmers, editors, and merchants hailed the DFU's triumph across upstate New York. The Watertown Times pointed to "the overwhelming public support that the farmers received in their strike" as a significant factor in the union victory, and added: "The Dairy Farmers Union emerges on top. In few short years it has become the dominant organization throughout the entire milkshed. And why should this not be so? The union was formed as an organization of producers for the benefit of producers."[36]

Victory headline. Watertown Daily Times, August 22, 1939.

In northern New York, local communities celebrated the union's victory. On August 23, Potsdam residents and merchants staged a celebration for DFU farmers. In Canton, two days later, nine hundred people marched in a mock funeral procession down Main Street complete with two coffins—one for the Dairymen's League, the other for the "Milk Monopoly."[37] Four hundred people joined the celebration in Malone; twenty-five hundred participated in Evans Mills. One thousand DFU supporters attended a victory parade at the firemen's festival in LaFargeville.[38]

The largest DFU victory celebration occurred in Watertown, New York, on September 30. Union supporters organized a rally and parade complete with floats, a motorcycle escort, and high school marching bands. The Lewis County DFU organization sponsored a float upon which solemn, black-clad mourners grieved over graves bearing the names of the Big Three milk dealers. Following the parade, which the Watertown Daily Times called "the best of its kind ever held here," rain-soaked farmers and their supporters moved to the Watertown High School auditorium. They heard speeches from Archie Wright, Earl Latham, Jefferson County DFU chair; William T. Field, president of the Watertown Chamber of Commerce; Watertown Daily Times Editor Harold Johnson, and Congressman Francis Culkin of Oswego. Culkin accused Governor Lehman of "indifference to dairymen's needs," and called for "the abolition of both the bargaining agencies and the 'milk trust.'" Johnson called the DFU "a grassroots farmers' movement which won," and characterized Archie Wright as a "sturdy, resourceful, fighting Yankee."[39]

Go To:
Dairy Strike: Part I  Introduction  Background	Dairy Strike: Part III  Return to top  Struggles to Close the Heuvelton Sheffield Farms Plant  DFU's Struggle to Close Canton Milk Plants
Dairy Strike: Part II  The 1939 DFU Milk Strike  Struggles in Words and Photographs	Dairy Strike: Part IV  Conclusion  Postscript  Acknowledgements  About the Author  Suggested Reading

Notes for Part III:

36. Watertown Daily Times, 22 August 1939, 4. [Return to text]

37. Watertown Daily Times, 28 August 1939, 3. [Return to text]

38. Watertown Daily Times, 29 August 1939, 6. [Return to text]

39. Watertown Daily Times, 30 September 1939, 18; New York Times, 1 October 1939, 12. [Return to text]

~ End Part III~

To: Part IV
The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton, New York:
The Story in Words and Pictures Copyright © 1998 by the Journal for MultiMedia History.
Contents: JMMH, Volume 1 Number 1 ~ Fall 1998