Chicago in the Age of Capital: Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Abstract

Who governed American cities? The question has been central to urban studies over several generations and of special importance to those examining metropolitan public life during the late nineteenth century. For some, post–Civil War cities were quintessentially pluralistic settings, with power distributed across a multiplicity of groups and interests. Others argue that economic changes concentrated power in the hands of a new business elite. The labor historians John B. Jentz and Richard Schneirov join this debate in Chicago in the Age of Capital, a thoroughly researched and convincing assessment of the interplay between the spread of industrial capitalism and the evolution of American democracy in an important city. On questions of power, the truth is usually in the details, and Jentz and Schneirov provide plenty of them. In their telling, the Civil War triggered a sudden transformation in the local economy, as Chicago shifted from being a trading entrepôt with a merchant elite to a city increasingly dominated by large-scale manufacturers. For workers, this change meant a shift to wage labor that undercut their aspirations for independent citizenship. Slowly, and in complex ways, they began to coalesce into a self-conscious class with a coherent political program. Only after the great fire of 1871, when the issues and alliances connected with the Civil War had faded, did the city's elite unite around an agenda of low taxes, municipal efficiency, and, for a time, temperance. Business leaders gained the upper hand in the battle against workers after the panic of 1873 but could not hold it. The city erupted during the great strike of 1877, at which point it became clear that Chicago workers were becoming a cohesive group capable of challenging capitalist power. Democratic mayor Carter Harrison Sr. (1879–1887, 1893) crafted a governing settlement, ensuring that the limited government and low taxes business leaders craved would endure by accommodating working-class demands, including leniency on temperance, the curtailment of police interference in strikes, and official appointments for labor leaders. The result was a new order that accepted industrial capitalism, wage labor, and limited government while also incorporating the immigrant working class into the polity where it restrained elite power.