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Rethinking the Relation of Labor to the Politics of Urban Social Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century America: The Case of Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Richard Schneirov
Richard Schneirov
Affiliation:
Indiana State University
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Extract

In the past decade many “new labor historians” have shifted their emphasis away from a narrowly focused social and cultural history and, without abandoning social historical insights, have reengaged vigorously with political history. In addition to their earlier interest in defining a “working-class politics” and tracing how it fared within the electoral system, labor historians recently have begun to reassess the larger periodizing concepts in political history, including those relating to party formation, political mobilization, political language and ideology, and political culture. The result has been significant progress toward the goal first articulated by Herbert Gutman: to rethink the basic building blocks of American history in such a way as to take full account of the experiences, aspirations, and movements of working people and other subordinate groups studied by social historians.

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Articles
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 46 , Fall 1994 , pp. 93 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1994

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References

NOTES

1. Both Herbert Gutman and David Montgomery paved the way in the 1960s. See in particular Gutman, Herbert, “The Workers Search for Power,” in The Gilded Age, rev. ed., ed. Morgan, H. Wayne (New York, 1970), 31–53Google Scholar, and Montgomery, , Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York, 1967).Google Scholar After a hiatus in which social history overshadowed political history, the following works on nineteenth-century labor history have established a new agenda: Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. (New York, 1984);Google ScholarFink, Leon, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983);Google ScholarBridges, Amy, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (Cambridge, 1985);Google ScholarOestreicher, Richard, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Poltics, 1870–1940,” Journal of American History 74 (03 1988): 1257–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Interview with Gutman, Herbert,” Radical History Review 27 (05 1983):217–18.Google Scholar

3. Compare Perlman, Selig in Commons, John R. et al., History of Labour in the United States, 4 vols. (New York, 1918–1935), vol. 2Google Scholar and Grob, Gerald N., Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Chicago, 1961) with the work of the more recent labor historians.Google Scholar See Oestreicher, Richard, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana, 1986)Google Scholar and Fink, Workingmen's Democracy. Two recent syntheses of the new labor history covering the late nineteenth century also adopt this view. See Laurie, Bruce, Artisans Into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989)Google Scholar and the American Social History Project's survey text, Who Built America? vol. 2 (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

4. Holli, Melvin G., Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969);Google ScholarThelen, David P., The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900 (Columbia, Mo., 1972);Google ScholarNord, David Paul, Newspapers and New Politics: Midwestern Municipal Reform, 1890–1900 (Madison, 1981).Google Scholar

5. See Schneirov, Richard, Grasp for Power: The Knights of Labor, the Trade Unions, and Municipal Politics in Late Ninteenth-Century Chicago (Champaign, forthcoming).Google Scholar

6. For examples of influential attempts to attribute urban progressivism to one class or strata, see Huthmacher, J. Joseph, “Urban Liberalism in the Age of Reform,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (09 1962):321–41Google Scholar and Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55 (10 1964):157–69.Google ScholarSklar, Martin J. has written that “class conflict and changing class relations, corresponding with developing modes of production, generate conditions and pressures for changes of profound effect, but cross-class alignments transact them.” The United States as a Developing Country: Studies in U.S. History in the Progressive Era and the 1920s (Cambridge, 1992), 19;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also see idem, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1906: The Market, the Law and Politics (Cambridge, 1988), 17. Such an approach does not necessarily deny the existence of a hierarchical or even hegemonic relationship within this cross-class coalition, though it should not be assumed, in urban politics, that businessmen and professionals always held the dominant position.

7. The term originated in Perlman, Selig, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York, 1928), 171–76, esp. 173.Google Scholar

8. The Knights of Labor, November 27, 1886.

9. The letter is also evidence that the ULP anticipated the discovery of what Richard L. McCormick views as the core of progressive politics in the early twentieth century. See “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism” American Historical Review 85 (04 1981):247–74.Google Scholar

10. Stark, Bennet S., “The Political Economy of State Public Finance: Illinois, 1830–1970” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1982), 75–81, 95, 103, 113;Google ScholarMerriam, Charles E., Report of the Investigation of the Municipal Revenues of Chicago (Chicago, 1906), 77–145;Google ScholarTeaford, Jon C., Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870–1900 (Baltimore, 1984), 296.Google Scholar

11. Destler, Chester McArthur, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia, 1963).Google Scholar

12. Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York, 1965), ix–xviii.Google Scholar

13. Wheelock, Lewis dates the beginnings of social gospel religion in Chicago to the hanging of the anarchists. See “Urban Protestant Reactions to the Chicago Haymarket Affair, 1886–1893” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1956), 195–236.Google Scholar

14. Bordin, Ruth, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 98, 103–08, 156;Google ScholarThe Knights of Labor, March 5, 1887, 11; November 9, 1889, 9; June 7, 1890.

15. Tax, Meredith,The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880–1907 (New York, 1980), 65–89;Google ScholarSklar, Kathryn Kish, “Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers,” Signs 10 (Summer 1985):658–77;CrossRefGoogle ScholarScharnau, Ralph, “Elizabeth Morgan, Crusader for Labor Reform,” Labor History 14 (Summer 1973):41–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1890, 3; March 5, 1890, 2; January 3, 1891, 3; February 21, 1891, 11; March 9, 1891, 9; May 13, 1892 3.

17. The Knights of Labor, December 22, 1888, 1; Nord, Newspapers and the New Politics, 41–42.

18. McCarthy, Michael P., “The New Metropolis: Chicago, the Annexation Movement, and Progressive Reform,” in The Age of Reform: New Perspectives on the Progressive Era, ed. Ebner, Michael H. and Tobin, Eugene M. (Port Washington, N.Y., 1977);Google ScholarWade, Louise, Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, 1977), 331–51.Google Scholar

19. Chicago Tribune, November 28, 1889, 1; December 5, 1889, 1; The Knights of Labor, December 28, 1889, 1.

20. Nord, David Paul, “The Public Community: The Urbanization of Journalism in Chicago” Journal of Urban History 11 (08 1985):411–41;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, “The Business Values of American Newspapers: The Nineteenth Century Watershed in Chicago,” Journalism Quarterly 61 (Summer 1984):265–73; idem, “The Politics of Agenda-Setting in Late Nineteenth- Century Cities,” Journalism Quarterly 58 (Winter 1981):565–74.

21. The month-long series in the Chicago Times began July 29, 1888; on Bonfield see January 1 through March 15, 1889.

22. Chicago Times, January 27, 1889, 19.

23. The Rights of Labor, March 7, 1891, 7.

24. The Rights of Labor, March 1, 1890, 1.

25. Christie, Robert, Empire in Wood: A History of the Carpenters' Union (Ithaca, 1956);Google ScholarSchneirov, Richard and Suhrbur, Thomas J., Union Brotherhood, Union Town: The History of the Carpenters' Union of Chicago, 1863–1987 (Carbondale, III., 1988), 26–43;Google ScholarJentz, John B., “Bread and Labor: Chicago's German Bakers Organize,” Chicago History 12 (Summer 1983):24–35;Google ScholarChicago Tribune, May 4, 1888, 8; May 15, 1890, 3; May 21, 1890, 3.

26. Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1891, 9; The Labor Directory of Chicago and Vicinity, 1891 (Chicago, 1891).Google Scholar

27. Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1891, 27; September 5, 1892, 3; Tenth Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor, 1894, Strikes and Lockouts. (Washington, D.C., 1894), 163–250;Google ScholarThe Rights of Labor, October 18, 1890, 1.

28. Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1890, 9, 10.

29. The Knights of Labor, February 23, 1889, 10; March 16, 1889, 1; March 23, 1889, 8, 9; Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1889, 10; February 22, 1891, 3; March 1, 1891, 1. On MacVeagh see Schneirov, Richard, “Class Conflict, Municipal Politics, and Governmental Reform in Gilded Age Chicago, 1871–1875,” in German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850–1910: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Keil, Hartmut and Jentz, John B. (De Kalb, III, 1983), 183, 194, 199–200.Google Scholar

30. The Rights of Labor, December 17, 1892, 1; on Pomeroy, see Staley, Eugene, History of the Illinois State Federation of Labor (Chicago, 1930), 89–90.Google Scholar

31. Abbott, Lyman, Watching the World Go By (New York, 1933), 93;Google ScholarTaylor, Graham, Pioneering on Social Frontiers(Chicago, 1930), 3–5.Google Scholar

32. Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1890, 4; May 1, 1890, 1; The Rights of Labor, April 5, 1890, 9. The success of collective bargaining by the mid-1890s is discussed in Jackson, Robert Max, The Formation of Craft Labor Markets (Orlando, 1984);Google ScholarJentz, , “Bread and Labor”; Schneirov and Suhrbur, Union Brotherhood, Union Town, 44–82;Google Scholar and Spahr, Charles B., America's Working People (New York, 1900), 167–90.Google Scholar

33. On the Civic Federation, see The Civic Federation of Chicago, First Annual Report of the Central Council (Chicago, 1895);Google Scholar and Ginger, Ray, Altgeld's America: The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities (Chicago, 1958), 249–53.Google Scholar

34. The story of the failure of independent labor politics in the mid-1890s is told by Destler, Chester McArthur, American Radicalism, 1865–1901: Essays and Documents (New York, 1946);Google Scholar on labor progressivism, see Barnard, Harry, Eagle Forgotten: The Life of John Peter Altgeld (Secaucus, N.J., 1938);Google Scholar and Pegram, Thomas R., Partisans and Progressives: Private Interests and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870–1922 (Urbana, 1992), 121–48.Google Scholar

35. For an account of laborism in this era, see Kazin, Michael, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana, 1987), 270–75;Google Scholar on the CFL's support for progressive reform, see Pegram, Partisans and Progressives, 121–48; and Flanagan, Maureen A., Charter Reform in Chicago (Carbondale, 1987), 32, 47–63.Google Scholar

36. That American workers shared in the American tradition and ideal of limited government has been noted by many recent labor historians, See, for example, Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 21–26; Laurie, Artisans into Workers; and Schneirov, Richard, “Political Cultures and the Role of the State in Labor's Republic: The View from Chicago, 1848–1877”. Labor History 32 (Summer 1991):376–400.Google Scholar