Labor Day Blues

If you are social distancing and masked, as I hope you are, this is a different kind of Labor Day. No community picnics with speeches by politicians, no concerts, maybe some fireworks on television. Annual parades across the country have been cancelled due to the pandemic. Maybe you’re shopping the sales online. However you’re marking this day, please stay safe.

Labor Day began back in the 1880s to honor working people—the first parade was in New York City in 1887, and the day became a Federal holiday in 1894. The last quarter of the 19^th century was a time marked by clashes, often violent, between labor and the robber barons who thought they ruled the world during the Gilded Age. It was also the era of the rise of labor unions, designed to protect laborers by stabilizing wages, limiting working hours, guaranteeing days off, and other measures so that men, women, and children had more to their lives than dawn-to-dusk work in sweatshops, factories, and the like. In some ways, those clashes of values are reflected again in our society today—we haven’t come as far as we thought or else we’ve slid backwards.

Perhaps the most notorious labor riot was the Haymarket which occurred in Chicago in 1886 after bombing disrupted a peaceful labor rally at the McCormick Reaper Works in support of the eight-hour day. Police killed one laborer and injured several others as they tried to disperse the demonstrators. Someone threw a bomb, and between that and the resulting gunfire seven police and at least four civilians were killed. Dozens others were injured.

A German immigrant, August Spies, was so angered at the police brutality that he rushed to the offices of an anarchist newspaper, Arbeiter-Zeitung, and issued a call to arms for workingmen. A second rally as held in Haymarket Square. Spies spoke, followed by his colleague Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned anarchist. The mayor of Chicago was even on hand to ensure that things remained peaceful—but he decided all was well and went home too early. Police tried to disperse the crowd, another bomb was thrown, and gunfire and chaos followed. Several police and civilians were killed.

The riot set off a nation-wide wave of violence, and police rounded up foreign-born protestors and labor organizers. In Chicago, seven men were sentenced to death—ultimately four were hanged, including Spies and Parsons, one committed suicide, and the remaining three were pardoned. It was not a pretty episode in the country’s history.

My research for the historical novel, The Gilded Cage, led me deep into the conflict surrounding the Haymarket Riot and indeed into the whole labor movement era in Chicago. Spies, Parsons, and their families became minor characters in the book. The Gilded Cage was published in the spring of 2016. At the time I had no idea how relevant that history would be to us in 2020, but today that bit of history speaks to me as an object lesson.

So today, if you’re having a family-only barbecue in the back yard or—as I will be doing, eating leftovers, raise a glad to the working men and women of the late nineteenth century who fought so hard to secure protections for those who work in nine-to-five jobs, often physical hard jobs.

And I hope you find some fireworks on TV because, well, there just ought to be fireworks!

 

Was history your favorite subject?

They say that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. I've been delving into the history of Chicago in the Gilded Age (late nineteenth century) when capitalists got richer and richer and the working people toiled long hours at difficult work for substandard wages. Talk about class warfare! In Chicago one of the outcomes was the Haymarket Riot. Workers gathered peacefully to protest police brutality, specifically the deaths of several workers the day before. As police worked to control the crowd, someone threw a bomb into the police troops. In the resulting gunfire several police and civilians were killed. Later, the "anarchists" accused of inciting the riot were hanged. It was not Chicago's finest hour.
I'm a native of Chicago, which perhaps accounts for the fascination all this history holds for me. I grew up in a house built in the early 1890s for the Columbian Exposition (1893), and I learned to skate in the Midway left behind by that exposition. I shopped at Marshall Field's and while I never stayed at the Palmer House I certainly knew of that legendary hotel. My study delved into the stories of George Pullman (as in Pullman railway sleeping cars), the great meat packers like Augustus Swift, newspaper editor and publisher Joseph Medill--all the names associated with making Chicago one of the most powerful cities in the nation.
Today I see that history being repeated--the rich increasing their wealth on the backs of the poor, an increasing polarity of society between the haves and the have-nots. As Congress cuts backs on health care (or tries to), veterans' benefits, women's rights and health care, wage increases, I wonder how long it will be before some spark ignites riots.
A riot in the 1880s was to be feared; such an uprising today, with increased communication and the easy availability of all kinds of weapons, could be a major disaster. It's no secret that I'm not happy with the make-up of the new Congress, and I think there lies the blame. I wonder what Speaker Boehner would say if you asked him what he knew about the Haymarket Riot?
I want to say to him and his colleagues, "Quit trying to outsmart the President and go read your American history books."
Yes, I'm writing a novel about Chicago. More news on that to come.

Chicago's Gilded Age

I'm living in Chicago's nineteenth-century Gilded Age right now as I rewrite my historical novel. Once titled Potter's Wife, I think it will now be titled "The Gilded Cage." The story of Potter Palmer, who created the Palmer House hotel, and his society-born wife, Bertha (Cissy) Honore, is set against the background of Chicago's fascinating history. The Great Fire, the Haymarket Riot, and, finally, the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It was an era of tremendous wealth on the part of a few and abject poverty on the part of too many. Potter Palmer was a capitalist who believed that any man could achieve the wealth he had--he didn't realize how extreme poverty holds a man down. His wife, Cissy, was one of the first to recognize the social obligations of great wealth, and she worked at Hull House, had poor young woman into her house for cooking lessons, took food and clothing to those less fortunate than she, and ultimately was the president of the Exposition's Board of Lady Managers.
I'm fascinated by all this. I grew up on Chicago's South Side, not too far from the Midway created for the Exposition --it's where I learned to ice skate--and I attended the University of Chicago, which sits on the edge of the Midway. The history of Chicaago is part of my life story.
I'm noticing great parallels between that age and ours: the wealthy got wealthier, and the poor suffered incredible hardship--working ten or twelve-hour days for a pittance. Cries for shorter work hours and pay raises went unheeded by capitalists like Palmer, Marshall Field, Gustavus Swift, Philip Armour, George Pullman--all names famous in industrial history. So far, our situation today is less desperate but I can see how despair leads to civic uprising...and it makes me pause for thought.
Propriety was a big thing in those days--women of fashion did not bob their hair or wear bloomers nor protest for women's rights. Potter Palmer was always afraid his wife would become a suffragette. And Cissy, social-minded though she was, enjoyed the luxuries of wealth--I'm amazed at the ease with which these people traveled to New York City and to Europe. Chicago was also trying to prove itself to the East, where the Gilded Age flourished and people thought Chicago was still a rough outpost on the plains.
Fascinating stuff. If you can't wait for "The Gilded Cage," read Renee Rosen's What the Lady Wants, a novel about Marshall Field. And then read "The Gilded Cage" when it's published--sorry, no pub date yet. But I am really enthusiastic about this work. Thanks for letting me share.