Recently, a photograph of a packing gang at the Coplay Cement Manufacturing Company was given to the Atlas Cement Memorial Museum by Mr. Frank Yandrasitz of Northampton.

His father was one of many local cement workers who was a native of Austrian-Hungary. Mr. Adolph Yandrasitz, as many of his countrymen, immigrated to the Lehigh Valley to work in the area cement plants. The cement companies sent employment agents to Austria-Hungary to entice men to work at their plants.

After settling in Coplay, Adolph married, but faced tragedy when his first wife passed away from an affliction which could be medically treated today. While working in the garden, a splinter had caused a case of blood poisoning, resulting in an early death.

The family moved to Stiles and Adolph walked to work, as he did when they moved to Northampton. He later married a widow with five children. His sons would carry lunch to their father, especially in the summer when the packhouse was extremely busy and overtime extended to 12 to 14 hours daily. The packhouse gang moved thousands of bags into boxcars. In those days most cement was moved by rail.

A packer would wheel 10 to 12 bags every few minutes into the boxcars. Each bag weighed 94 pounds, so 10 bags equaled 940 pounds. The men were durable, enabling them to move all this cement. The boxcars were hot, there was no ventilation.

Boxcars had a capacity of more than 1,200 bags. Two or three men wheeled the cement into the car. In the car were two laborers called "throwers" who stacked bags 12 high, row after row. No recreation center was required to keep these men in excellent condition! In present cement plant packhouses, bags are stacked by a palletizing machine and moved to waiting trucks by forklift, a great improvement from the past.

Some of my readers may recall these hearty packers who worked there in 1952: Martin Frisch, Adolph Wechsler, Joseph Groller, Charles Ivankovits, Julius Fidler, Stephen Stelzman, Rudolph Kovacs, Stephen Kovacs, Stephen Paly, Richard Yost and Robert Meckes. If those days, automatic packing machines were just appearing in the industry.

These fine men were represented by Local 14 United Cement, Lime and Gypsum Workers. For many years, the union was headed by Ralph Talotta. Unfortunately the historic plant and local 14 are now only memories from our past.

Mr. Yandrasitz died before he could collect any pension. He, like his fellow workers, was a dedicated cement worker who helped establish a tradition which continues in our present plants.

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More in two weeks. See you then.