Born in the village of Brodski Varoš near Slavonski Brod, in Austria-Hungary's Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, at the age of 18 in search of a job as a metal worker he moved to Sarajevo. There, in November 1905 he joined the newly-formed Radical Movement union, and took part in several strikes in the following years. His son Stjepan was born in Sarajevo in 1912; a communist and a partisan, Stjepan Đaković would be killed by the ustashas in 1942.[1]