Trivia Wednesday: Sturdy Construction

     You know what time it is:  Trivia Time!  First, last week's answer:  The boy murdered by Leopold and Loeb was named Bobby Franks.  And now, this week's question:

As destructive as it was, several buildings survived the Great Chicago Fire.  I've mentioned several of them in passing.  Name one of them.

 

     Obviously, multiple answers will be accepted.  Check back next week for the answer and another question!

The Chicago Way for a Chicago Union: Labor Day Digest 6/6

     After 5 entries about Labor History in Chicago, it's time for one final post.  As a recap, so far today we have talked about The Jungle, the Pullman Strike, Samuel Gompers, the Haymarket Affair, and International Worker's Day(aka May Day).  But now, we wrap it all up by getting acquainted with the Teamsters...

     Ever since 1887, the American Federation of Labor had been organizing groups of teamsters(the term is derived from workers who would lead teams of draft horses that moved goods from place to place) into groups to better advocate for themselves and their causes. In 1898, the AFL created a separate division specifically for Teamsters.  However, this failed to satisfy a group of Teamsters in Chicago, who created the Teamsters National Union in 1901. 2 years later, the AFL arranged for its teamster union to merge with the Teamsters, creating the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is what the union is known as to this day.  Even in the very first election held by the Teamsters, the future corruption of the union was evident, as the man elected President of the Teamsters(Cornelius Shea) was accused of embezzlement prior to the election.

     Once taking office, the accusations against Shea were borne out in the actions of the Teamsters.  As the Teamsters were the union representing drivers, a strike by them could quite literally paralyze commerce throughout an entire city.  During Shea's administration, the Teamsters would routinely abuse this trait by soliciting bribes from city officials to avert Teamster strikes.  The Teamsters did participate in some legitimate actions during Shea's time, including strikes in support of railway workers and meat cutters.  In 1905, the union walked out in support of tailors at Montgomery Ward.  Everything went great, until it was revealed that Cornelius Shea had spent the duration of the strike carousing in a brothel hosting lavish parties all in the company of his 19-year-old mistress.  This marked the beginning of the end of the Shea era, and his successor was elected President in 1907.

     For the next 45 years, Daniel Tobin took the helm, a period of time that saw the union reach new heights in both membership and levels of corruption.  By the dawn of the 1950s, the Teamsters' corruption reached new levels when they started mingling with organized crime.  It was also during this time that the Teamsters started trying to absorb other unions into their ranks.  This started with the International Longshoreman's Association, a union that was even more corrupt than the Teamsters, even to the point of electing a known mob associate as VP of the union.  This attempt was vetoed by the AFL, but another attempt was made to merge with the Brewery Workers Union. When this was vetoed by the Brewers, the Teamsters raided the union anyway, an action that drew harsh criticism from the AFL, which wound up passing an anti-raiding bill in the wake of the incident.

     In 1957, the Teamsters elected Jimmy Hoffa to be their president, and he once again upheld the status quo of corruption that was the Teamsters' trademark.  This time, the graft of choice was taking monies from the union's pension plans and funneling them to the Mafia in order to aid their erection of Las Vegas as we know it today.  This involvement with The Mob got Hoffa caught up in the anti-organized crime crusade that was being led by Robert Kennedy, and Hoffa was sent to prison in 1967.  President Nixon pardoned him in 1972, but on the condition that he suspend all involvement with the Teamsters until 1980, at which point Hoffa could make a comeback.  This was not to be however, as Hoffa disappeared without a trace in 1975, never to be heard from again.

     In more recent times, the Teamsters have tried to initiate reforms, stemming from the organization of individual union members into groups such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which has been a force since the late 1970s.  Over the years, the TDU has fought for and won much greater transparency at all levels of the Teamsters.  No longer could upper management strike deals on contracts and pensions in smoke-filled rooms and keep the everyday union man in the dark.  Also in this period, the rank-and-file teamsters won the right to directly elect the top leadership of the union for the first time.  Today, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters still advocates for the rights of haulers everywhere, while continuing to clean up its checkered past

May Day! May Day!: Labor Day Digest 5/6

     For our pentultimate Labor Day post, I ask a question:  Why is May 1 always commemorated with a smattering of rallies and protests across the nation?  This is why.

     As was mentioned in the entry about Haymarket, there are still commemorations nowadays in honor of the Haymarket Strike and the sacrifices made as part of it.  In 1889, the Second International(a worldwide confederation of socialist groups) met for their First Congress in Paris.  At this meeting it was decided that there should be a commemoration the following year of the Haymarket Affair.  The holiday became a routine occurrence following the Second Congress in 1891.

     By 1904, the holiday was going along strong, when the International Socialist Conference called upon all workers to stop work on May 1 so as to demonstrate for an 8-hour workday.  Over the years, the working classes in many different countries tried to have May 1 recognized as an official holiday.  In most of those countries, May 1 became officially recognized as Labor Day, a day set aside each year to celebrate the contributions of workers to society.

     However, one obvious exception is the United States of America.  In this case, President Grover Cleveland was worried that observing Labor Day on May 1 would give different Labor groups a reason to politicize the holiday as a commemoration of the Haymarket Affair.  So instead, the United States adopted the first Monday in September as the official Labor Day holiday(this may or may not have been in commemoration of the recent cessation of the Pullman Strike).  However, that hasn't stopped the date from being known as an annual day of protest.  On May Day you can find groups organizing in support of many different causes.  In 2006, the day was selected as the date of the Great American Boycott, a march advocating for Immigration Reform, and in 2012 it was celebrated with several marches and rallies, some of them led by members of Occupy Wall Street.

Haymakers in the Haymarket: Labor Day Digest 4/6

     Halfway down, halfway to go.  Let's turn our eyes to Chicago's old Haymarket Square for our next entry.

      If there's one thing that almost everyone who works has in common, it is the 8-hour workday.  Some of us might work more than that on occasion, and some of us may work less, but 8 hours is the standard.  But it wasn't always this way.  The 8-hour workday is yet another result of the acts of unions throughout the years.  Today we're talking about one particular instance where the 8-hour day was crusaded for.

     It all starts in October of 1884, when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions met and declared that by May 1, 1886, all employers would be using the 8-hour workday as a template for the hours of their employees.  As the date approached and employers did nothing, the powers that be called for a general strike so as to show support for the 8-hour workday.  On the morning of May 1, roughly 40,000 workers in Chicago walked off the job and started marching in favor of the new hours.  On the third day of the strike, the workers gathered near the McCormick(a relative of the Tribune's McCormick) Machine Company plant and rallied there.  They heard speeches from various people there, including several beseeching them to keep the peace.  And up until that point, they did.  And for the rest of that day, they did.

     But on the 4th day of the rally, things started out pretty calmly.  For that matter, even Mayor Carter Harrison Sr. stopped by for a time.  Later on in the evening, the weather was worsening, so many folks went home.  At about 10:30, the police came in to force the ceasing of the speeches.  As the officers were advancing towards the stage, there was a small homemade bomb thrown directly in front of the officers.  The force of the blast killed 7 officers, injured several more, and touched off a straight-up riot in the middle of the street.

     In the fracas, more than 100 marchers were arrested.  Eventually 8 of them were charged with various crimes carrying sentences up to and including the death penalty.  1 person was sent to prison for 15 years, while the other 7 were sentenced to die.  While on Death Row, one of the condemned men committed suicide, while 2 more had their sentences commuted to life in prison(and were eventually given full pardons)by the governor of Illinois.  On November 11, 1887, the remaining four men were hung, carrying out the death sentence.

     In the years since then, the Haymarket Affair has become a common rallying cry and shibboleth amongst supporters of organized labor.  In fact, one particular aspect of the strike is commemorated every year in May.  There will be more on that in another entry later on this week though.  For now, we see now that the Haymarket Affair is yet another linchpin in the history of organized labor coming to us from Chicago.

A Recreation Area for a Labor Icon: Labor Day Digest 3/6

     As Labor Day winds on, here is a tale about an integral person in the Labor Movement, who has also been honored with his own park in Chicago.     

     How could a child born in 1850 England go on to influence the entire history and legacy of labor unions to this very day?  Pretty easily actually, just ask Samuel Gompers.  For the first 10 years of his life, he lived in London, and attended the Jewish Free School.  All of that changed in April of 1860, when he was pulled out of school and apprenticed off as a cigarmaker in order to help his family out with their crushing levels of debt.  Alas, even this did not help, and the family immigrated to the United States in 1863.

     Once in the states, Gompers promptly started working once again as a cigarmaker in Manhattan, becoming active in the Local 15 Union the very next year.  In 1873, he jumped to another company, one that was more in line with his advanced abilities.  While there, he started to become influenced by the more socialist ideas that were propagated in the talk in that shop.  2 years after that, he became president of the Local 144 Union.  In 1881, he was instrumental in founding the organization that would become the American Federation of Labor(which merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955 to become the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the United States).  In 1894, he was instrumental in promoting the new Labor Day holiday that had been recognized by Congress to placate the Pullman strikers.

     A number of years later, he popped back up when the United States got involved in World War I, urging all unions to hold off on striking and other labor actions during wartime so as to give America and its companies every advantage possible.  Gompers died in 1924, but many of his methods of organizing labor are used to this day even.  Additionally, there is both a park and a statue in downtown Chicago memorializing his roles in the labor history of this city and all others as well.

The Train Strike: Labor Day Digest 2/6

     And now for the 2nd in our Labor Day series    

     In 1893, several things happened. The Vienna beef hot dog was first shown to the world, the 1893 World's Fair rolled into town, Carter Harrison was assassinated, Harry Grossman was 4 years away from being born, and an economic Panic hit the country that caused the fortunes of the Pullman Palace Car Company to flounder(and for demand to take a hit as well). This slackening of demand induced George Pullman to cut back on what he was paying his workers. Okay, that seems fair enough, if profits are down, then there simply isn't as much work to give out, and dem's the breaks.

     Except I'm leaving one tiny thing out. Those of you who read my entry about George Pullman know that most of the workers he had in his employ lived in an absolutely massive company town right by the factory. All of the prices and rents in this community were also set by Pullman. Well, when Pullman started losing cash, he cut the wages of all the employees. Not just that, but remember that factory town I told you about? Well, even with the wages being cut, Pullman still charged his workers the same amount of money in rent each and every month. Eventually, this got the workers to the point where they had had enough, and they started to organize.

     At this point, the American Railway Union comes into the picture.  This outfit had been formed in the Summer of 1893 by Eugene Debs, and was already earning a name for itself(having successfully negotiated a deal with the Great Northern Railway in August of that year.)  The ARU aided the situation by calling for a general boycott of all Pullman cars.  As a result 125,000 workers all across the country refused to handle trains carrying Pullman cars.  To combat this, the General Manager's Association(a national federation of 24 Railroad owners) immediately brought in strikebreakers to keep the trains running.  In time, the Federal Government got involved, as President Grover Cleveland considered it his responsibility to keep the mail running.  To further that objective, federal troops were sent in to restore order and get the trains back up and running.

     Eventually, the strike was broken, Eugene Debs was thrown in prison for six months, and everything returned to normal.  However, the strike did leave one important legacy that persists to this day.  In an effort to pacify organized labor in the aftermath of the strike, Congress passed a bill that recognized Labor Day as a national holiday.

Welcome To The Jungle: Labor Day Digest 1/6

     For those of you who were reading my blog last year, this might look familiar.  For those of you who weren't, here's what's up.  Last year I celebrated the entire first week of September as Labor Week, commemorating the many anchors that Chicago has given the Labor Movement.  For this year's Labor Day, I figured I'd condense all those entries into a single day of reposting.  For the next 12 hours, keep an eye to this blog as I will be putting up a new post about Chicago's Labor history.  And we're gonna get things rolling with Mr. Upton Sinclair's take on the meatpacking industry.

     Happy Monday everybody, and Welcome to Labor Week!  For those of you who read about George Pullman, you got a small teaser for this.  For all of you, here's more about what's going on this week.  Today most of the country has the day off.  But why is that?  That is to acknowledge the many contributions to our current workplace life that have been won by Unions, including an 8-hour workday, Child Labor Laws, safety standards, health benefits, and overtime pay, just to name a few.  So, between now and Friday I will be putting up an article every day talking about some facet of the history of Organized Labor and how it relates to Chicago.  And trust me, I've got some heavy topics on deck for this week.  From the roots of the May Day rallies that happen every year throughout the country, to the labor action that inspired the very creation of the Labor Day holiday, this week has it all.  But to start off with, I'd like to show you around...The Jungle...

     By 1906, the meatpacking industry had been a Chicago institution for well over half a century. However, it was about to get a rude awakening. For that was the year that Upton Sinclair threw the book(no pun intended) at the industry. In 1904, Upton Sinclair was a young writer working for a Socialist newspaper in Chicago. As part of an expose they were planning, Sinclair was sent to work undercover in the infamous Union Stockyards for seven weeks, where he eventually gathered material for the necessary articles. About a year later, Sinclair sought to fictionalize his experiences and publish them in book form. After much consternation(his novel was rejected five times before it was finally accepted) he finally found a publisher for his book. Doubleday released The Jungle on February 26, 1906.

     Once published, the book left the American people shocked and disgusted, just not in the way that Sinclair had hoped. You see, Sinclair had intended the book to be a clarion call alerting the public about the despicable condition of the working class in Gilded Age America. Such passages as the protagonist's wife getting raped by her boss, the terrible work conditions, and even some workers falling into mixing vats and being turned into lard were meant to tug at the heartstrings of America. And stories like the lard one did force America to think some things over, things like the safety of their food. The Jungle led to expanded oversight of meatpacking, the increased scrutiny of the industry by President Teddy Roosevelt, and even the establishment of the FDA. Even with all of this impact, Sinclair lamented that he wanted to "aim at the public's heart, but instead [he] hit it in the stomach"  The Jungle remains in print to this day, more than 107 years after its initial release, and it still serves as a testament to the state of both worker's rights and the meatpacking industry at the turn of the century.