Leather Wallet

This leather wallet, accompanying documents, and artifacts were issued from the Catholic Church Extension Society. It contains a membership card dated 1918, signed by James Edward Whalen, a rosary, and Catholic medallions. The wallet also includes an identification card, marking Whalen as a member of the Society and indicating he lived in Girard, Illinois. Girard was a coal mining town and items like this were carried by miners as emblems of their faith and possibly to issue last rights in the case of a mine collapse.

Coal mining and Catholicism have strong ties in Illinois, this was especially true at the time Whalen carried this wallet. Many miners in Illinois were Irish Catholic, as Whalen’s surname indicates he may have been. However, this connection goes beyond worker identity and reaches up to the institutional level. For example, in the early 20th century, the largest coal mining company in the state was Peabody Coal, whose president was Catholic.

At the turn of the 20th century, Catholics were discriminated against for religious, and often ethnic reasons. The Catholic Church Extensions Society was founded in 1906 in Chicago to support the social and religious needs of Catholic communities. The Society assisted clergy in obtaining resources, providing Catholic education, and even outfitted train cars as traveling chapels. Catholic workers’ associations partnered with the Society to provide resources, such as this leather wallet, to Catholic laborers across the country.

Sources: 

Barrett, James R. “Gatekeepers and ‘Americanizers’: Irish Americans and the Creation of a Multicultural Labor in the United States, 1880s-1920s.” In Frontiers of Labor: Comparatives Histories of the United States and Australia, edited by Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctv80c9ks.12 
Dickey, Susan Karma. “Bishop James A. Griffin and the Coal Miners’ War.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society vol. 101, no. 1 (2008): 22-34. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40204712
Dries, Angelyn. “Two Sides of the American Catholic Missions Coin: Mission Funding and Credit Unions. American Catholic Studies vol. 117, no. 1 (2006): 23-42. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44194974
Pehl, Matthew. The Making of Working-Class Religion. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2016. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hd18s4.6
Taylor, Wilma and Norman Taylor. “The Story of America’s Chapel Cars,” Railroad History no. 178 (1998): 6-75. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43522028