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Show i OLD TIMERS I Fred Fuelling Shares Wise Workingman's Thoughts ' - . , ' . ,3, ' v-. : ' - ' - u J . : - V-f : M h n - . I iJ- Km! .. Vs; ,, ' lOOOOO ,v K;000U :v": Fred Fuelling guides tour of City dungeon on Heritage Day. By Becky Cantwell Fred Fuelling, almost 76, is still a Park City working man, as he's been all his life. He didn't exactly want to give up retirement from a long career in mining and union and city leadership, but found himself and his wife Vieno unable to make it on a fixed pension, so Fred, still fit, knowledgeable and interested in almost everything tends the city's landfill full-time. Fuelling is a third-generation Parkite; both his grandfathers settled in the area in the town's earliest days. His grandfather Evans came west as a young scout for the U.S. Government, following follow-ing the Escalante trail through Provo Canyon and over Guardsman Guards-man Pass, stopping to rest and water horses at a spring where the Treasure Mountain Inn now stands. The scouts were learning about the area in advance of the Freeman survey in the mid 1800's. but Evans stayed around, working at most everything teaming, mining, logging, even hauling some of the huge stones used to build the Salt Lake Temple. In his last days he worked at American Smelting in Murray. Fred's grandmother Williams walked across the plains with her aunt and uncle in one of the early migrations of Mormon pioneers. She met Evans in Ogden; Fred stresses that LDS people arrived in Park City much later than in Salt Lake and had little to do with the town's early days. Civil War Vet Baker Fuelling's other grandfather received military training in Germany and gained U.S. citizenship citizen-ship following heavy artillery service during the Civil War. In 1871, when Park City was just beginning, he made a trip west from Wathena, Kansas where he had a wife and three children, including Fred's father. He had an idea of settling in Salt Lake but as a Roman Catholic, he wasn't well-received and so he headed for Park City where he set up a bake shop, candy kitchen, log cabin and tent where Blooms now stands. He had a German baker named Fritz to tend shop while he made several trips back to Kansas and finally brought his family in 1881. After the fire of 1898 burned down most of Main Street, Fuelling rebuilt across from the Claimjumper. There were several small bakeries then, all forced out of business when Continental Bakery, a big conglomerate stocked local stores with prices which started at five cents for 22 ounce loaves, too low to compete with. Fred recalls, though, that once competition had been eliminated, the price of bread was suddenly 15 or 20 cents. His granddad ran a confectionary in Ogden for awhile, then returned to open a candy kitchen on 10th and Park Avenue. Fred believes he had rnade an agreement with Continental not to bake again. - About the 23 Saloons Fuelling acknowledges that Park City had 23 saloons in those days, each with a steady clientele of miners who mainly associated according to national origin and tended to stick to their own drinking territory. Most of these earliest miners came as away from that, now its anything you can get away with." "Mining used to be a profession profes-sion by itself, not a fill-in job like it often is now. The old miner was just as jealous of his hammer as a pro-golfer today of his best putter. When they were drilling ore by hand, with a hammer and a piece of steel, the miner shaped that hammer to his liking, sometimes adding to it." Fuelling went to work skinning in the old Ontario tunnel, starting to drive horses in the mine at age 16. The horses, kept underground ;for their entire working lives often taught new workers the ropes, Fred insists. He soon went to work assisting a timberman in shoring up weak areas and developed into a "Bad Ground Specialist." the acknowledged expert timberman in the area who has been called in since his retirement in 1958 to advise others on what should be done with cave-ins. and dangerous mining situations. Early Unions Fuelling is also an expert on Park City's early union days since he played a leading role in working for better conditions for miners, most of his life. He says the first u nion was organized around 1909. the old Federation of Miners. Between then and 1914. the union, due to complete change in Europe and other factors, was almost a thing of the past. In those days, single jack and double jackers were required to work nine and one-half hours in . the face, at the working place, and to, get in and out of the drift on their own i time. These conditions brought about the strike of 1919 which led to change rooms, and an established eight and one-half hour day, from portal to portal."! The people who Fuelling gives credit for this were the International Inter-national Workers of the World, a union whose members Fuelling calls "The most abused people in the world." The companies, he claims were responsible for discrediting this group. "Calling - someone a Wobbly was a form of character assassination and they used it pretty freely," he states. At the same time, he says, the I.W.W. was in trouble in the woods, trouble which he says was stirred up by the companies who owned the timber. "The idea was r stir up trouble to get public sympathy, they prosecuted Big Bill Haywood, and Samuel Gompers did jail time, and they executed a man in the penitentiary peniten-tiary in Salt Lake, Joe Hill, for the same thing. They were branded labor leaders and militants. milit-ants. Anything that happened ( Please turn to page eight ) Indian War or Civil War veterans, and once mines became somewhat some-what established, immigrants began arriving direct from many European countries. But Fuelling says "a lot of what you hear about the wild saloons is hearsay. I was 17 before I saw a drunken man, it was kept that close. The owner's reputation depended on him not letting an intoxicated man on the street. They'd either call a team from Kimball's livery to get a drunk home or take him in the back room til he was able to appear halfway respectable on the street. They'd gamble heavily on payday nights on their earnings or on mining claims. But gamblers who were dishonest or professional were soon eliminated or run out of town. For example, Henry Spriggs at the Oak Bar if he caught one of his dealers cheating he'd personally run him out of town. So unless a guy got drunk and threw his money away, he didn't have much chance of getting cleaned out." "But one of the evils of World War I was that the element that came back was not nearly so honest. There were new people and attitudes changed, as they do in every war." Early Miners "Left a Clean Set-Up" "The old miners who developed de-veloped this country were honest. There were a lot of loners and some who travelled with three or four. They swung all over the western territory and were essentially honest. They'd say when they were leaving a place, 'leave a clean set-up, you may want to come back." This derives from a miner's term meaning leave yur work place tidy for the next shift, but it also referred to life. If they had to leave owing money, they'd make arrangements arrange-ments to pay. Now, anything you can get away with, that's what you do. And another thing the old miner felt obligated to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. They've completely got more old timers ( Continued from page seven ), Park City miners in the aftermath of the "Wobbly " movement. anywhere, it was the Wobblys! that did it." i "Afterwards, the Mine Mill and Smelter workers were established here in 1933, after. Roosevelt declared the right for the working man to organize and protect himself. A lot of the Wobbly leaders were involved in the leadership of this union and they didn't dare bother them so much because the right to organize was established. However, How-ever, they did call some of the leaders, including myself, Russians, Rus-sians, Soviets, we were all getting paid and handled by Russia, that's how the story went." Closed Shop After 1936 "I don't know how many times I went out and fought a case I wasn't in favor of because that's what the members wanted. After 1936 about, there was 100 per cent union membership or you didn't work, We had a closed shop after we got established which was the only way to have it. . After we were organized, the companies preferred to work with the union than without because the union had to assume some of the responsibility for the members. mem-bers. They would like to crush the unions now and I can't understand under-stand why." Fuelling became vice-president of the union in 1936, then chairman of the negotiating committee, then vice-president of the state union, then later i 1 an international representative and local president, then after local miners broke away from the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers and joined up with the steelworkers, he was vice-president and chairman chair-man of the negotiating committee again. The local decided to break away from the earlier union because allegations were made that the top level leadership was involved in communist activities. The change, Fuelling remembers took lengthy meetings and arguments but he believes "as mining builds, the union builds along with it." He retired from mining following follow-ing a back injury in 1958 and observes "things in Park City started sliding about then." He blames the situation on greed, claiming that stockholders wanted want-ed more profits than the Silver King could produce and noted that while, the mine was employing employ-ing 250, 1200 people were drawing paychecks in Salt Lake so that the average miner was supporting 1 1 others. He claims that union leadership got in the wrong hands and the whole town began a serious decline. He remembers on the day he assumed office as City Councilman in 1954 in the Silver Wheel Theatre lobby, the ceiling dropped in City Hall, . and soon after the furnace froze. Park City was about $64,000 in debt, couldn't get a loan, and many residents were leaving. Finally the councilmen persuaded the Bank of Coalville to grant them a $10,000 loan with an additional $10,000 promised in six months if things showed improvement. With the second loan the city began to pull out of debt and get credit. Sceptical of Town's Future Fuelling is skeptical about Park City's chances for all booms and no busts in the future. Having seen the town's fortunes rise and fall about five times, he believes the town would be better off without the ski resort because miners could afford to live in Park City and they would be more likely than skiers to put money back in. . . ... Fuelling,, like many, Park City natives feels resentment at the big money interests who he believes treated townspeople very unfairly. Property was bought low, often because of back taxes, and then it was suddenly sky high in price. But one of the reasons he stays, he says, is that the few remaining old timers are some of the finest people in the world. He recalls that before the days of insurance and workman's compensation, com-pensation, when someone died in the mine, everyone contributed, everyone was there to lend a hand when needed. Fred in his colorful life . has fathered seven children still living and now has 29 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. He " spent seven years with the Navy just after World War I, travelling to almost every port in the world. He also was Chancellor-Commander of the Knights of Pythias, president of the Lions Club and worked as Parliamentarian in the State Legislature. Sometimes known as "Mr. Democrat," he's a walking storehouse of wisdom, not only about Park City history, but about life itself |