The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman factory in Chicago in spring 1894. When it failed the ARU launched a national boycott against all trains that carried Pullman passenger cars. The nationwide railroad boycott that lasted from May 11 to July 20, 1894, was a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, the main labor unions, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. Most of the factory workers who built Pullman cars lived in the "company town" of Pullman just outside of Chicago. It was designed as a model community by its namesake founder and owner George Pullman.
The history of the United States from 1865 until 1918 covers the Reconstruction Era, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era, and includes the rise of industrialization and the resulting surge of immigration in the United States. This article focuses on political, economic, and diplomatic history.
Samuel Gompers was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor.
In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1870 to 1900. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an ever-increasing unskilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants.
The Progressive Era (1896–1916) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States of America that spanned the 1890s to World War I. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were addressing problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Social reformers were primarily middle-class citizens who targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office, a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies through methods such as trustbusting and corporations through antitrust laws, which were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. They also advocated for new government roles and regulations, and new agencies to carry out those roles, such as the FDA.
Progressivism in the United States is a political philosophy and reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century. Middle class and reformist in nature, it arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization such as the growth of large corporations, pollution and corruption in American politics.
Producerism is an ideology which holds that those members of society engaged in the production of tangible wealth are of greater benefit to society than, for example, aristocrats who inherit their wealth and status.
Joseph A. McCartin is a professor of history at Georgetown University whose research focuses on labor unions in the United States. He also serves as the executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
These are References for Labor unions in the United States.
The Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) is an umbrella organization for unions in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It is a subordinate body of the AFL–CIO, and as of 2011 has about 320 affiliated member unions representing half a million union members in Cook County.
William English Walling (1877–1936) was an American labor reformer and Socialist Republican born into a wealthy family in Louisville, Kentucky. He founded the National Women's Trade Union League in 1903. Moved by his investigation of the Springfield Race Riot of 1908 in the state capital of Illinois, he was among the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
Melvyn Dubofsky is professor emeritus of history and sociology, and a well-known labor historian. He is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the Binghamton University.
Leon Fink is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A historian, his research and writing focuses on labor unions in the United States, immigration and the nature of work. He is the editor of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, the premier journal of labor history in the United States.
Illinois Staats-Zeitung was one of the most well-known German-language newspapers of the United States; it was published in Chicago from 1848 until 1922. Along with the Westliche Post and Anzeiger des Westens, both of St. Louis, it was one of the three most successful German-language newspapers in the United States Midwest, and described as "the leading Republican paper of the Northwest", alongside the Chicago Tribune. By 1876, the paper was printing 14,000 copies an hour and was second only to the Tribune in citywide circulation.
The Battle of the Viaduct was an event that took place on July 25, 1877, in Chicago due to a much larger event, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The strike began on July 14, 1877 in Virginia.
This is a bibliography of selected publications on the history of Chicago. For most topics, the easiest place to start is Janice L. Reiff, et al. eds. The Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004), which has thorough coverage by leading scholars in 1120pp of text and many illustrations. It does not include biographies. It is online free.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1869, Citizens Party nominee Roswell B. Mason defeated Republican nominee George W. Gage by a landslide 27-point margin.
The Chicago mayoral election of 1883 was held on tuesday April 3, saw incumbent Carter Harrison Sr. defeat Republican Eugene Cary by a double-digit margin.
Death in the Haymarket is a 2006 popular history book on the Haymarket affair, written by James Green.
Ernst Schmidt (1830–1900) was a German American physician, socialist politician, and classical scholar. A Forty-Eighter who participated in the failed Revolutions of 1848, Schmidt emigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago in 1857, where he established himself as a notable figure in both medicine and politics.
