Cement is, well, cemented in Allen County’s history. From Monarch Cement’s proud legacy in Humboldt to the ruins of former giants in Iola, Carlyle, Concreto and Mildred, each has played a major part in our county’s industrial history.
The Lehigh Portland Cement Co., now the site of the newest state park in Kansas, has a rich past, beginning with its creation at the turn of the 20th century up to its closure in 1971.
But one of the darkest moments in Iola’s history occurred very early on in the plant’s history. It began with workers brought in to fill a labor shortage and ended in a shameful incident of mob rule and racism that led to hundreds of shots being fired and a forced roundup of workers on May 8, 1901.
At 9 p.m. that evening, an armed mob formed north of the Elm Creek bridge in Iola. They were heading to the cement plant to protest the presence of 23 Italian workers. The mob’s “rationale” was simple xenophobia: they believed Italian workers would undercut their pay and feared the Italians would take over the town.
THE MAY 9TH Iola Register reported that “there was trouble in Iola last night when a crowd of Iola men and boys went to the cement plant and after firing several hundred shots took the Italian workmen out of the tents where they were sleeping and marched them to the Santa Fe depot.”
“After considerable hooting, yelling and abuse,” the article continues, “the Italians were ordered to come out. A shot was fired, the crowd claiming that it came from inside the tents. The shot was the signal for a general volley and the night rang to the reports of revolvers, shotguns and rifles.”
The Italian men were rounded up by force: “One old man appeared with his eye all bruised, having been knocked from his perch in a tree with a club.”
The article reports that “several hundred sightseers accompanied the procession and gathered on the platform when the prisoners were placed in the south waiting room. The question of the disposition of the Italians then arose but no satisfactory solution was found, it being the simple plan to push them aboard a northbound train and let them rustle for themselves.”
“The Italians were hatless, coatless and some of them bare-footed.”
ALL 23 ITALIANS were arrested — under no known pretense — and held at the Santa Fe depot under the supervision of Sheriff Hobart. All were issued a train ticket to Kansas City, paid for by the cement company.
“We brought these men here very reluctantly, because we know the prejudice that always follows such action. And we did not bring them until we had exhausted every effort to find white labor,” later said Mr. J. A. Wheeler, manager of the cement plant.
“Now these are the simple facts. We are short of men. We could give work to a hundred more than we have today.”
A subsequent investigation into the mob and its leaders was conducted, with four individuals arrested under the charge of rioting: Ben Ganoung, George Smith, J.M. Warford and Jack Balthrope.
A dark moment in Iola’s history, indeed.
