Chicago History | Spring 1989 by Chicago History Museum

CHICAGO HISTORY-

____T_h_e_M_agazine of the Chicago Historical Socie!I_ __

EDITOR

Spring 1989

R USSE LL L EWIS

Volume XVIII, Number 1

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

MEG Moss ASSISTANT EDITOR ALETA ZAK EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

CONTENTS

M ARGARET WELSH DESIGNER

KATHERINE SOLOMONSON

BILL VA N NIMWEGEN PHOTOGRAPHY

jC)l·IN ALDERSON

L O LITA VLCEK

Copyright 1989 by the Chicago Historical Society C lark Street at North Avenue Chi cago, IL 606 14 ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in H istorical Abstracts and America: History and Life. Footnoted manuscripts of the articles appearing in this issue are avai lable from the Ch icago Histo,·ical Society's Publi cations Office. Cover: The Tribune Tower from the south bank of the Chicago River; c. 1926. The whaleback C hristop her Columbus is docked in the foreground . Photograph by Raymond W Trowbridge, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection. Gift of Edward and Kenneth Hedrich.

No Freaks, No Amazons, No Boyish Bobs SUSAN

JAY CRAWFORD

EDITORIAL INTERN

Chicago's Cathedral of Commerce

CAH

Labor's Last Stand TONI GILPI

DEPARTMENTS

3 60

From the Editor Yesterday's City

Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS Philip D. Block III, Chairman W. Paul Krauss, Vice-Chairman Richard H. eedham, Vice-Chairman

Philip W. Hummer, Treasurer Mrs. ewton . Minow, Secretary Stewart S. Dixon , Immediate Past Chairman

Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director

TRUSTEES William J. McDonough Philip D. Block III Robert Meers Laurence Booth Mrs. Emmett Dedmon Mrs. Newton N. Minow Stewart S. Dixon Richard H. Needham Philip W. Hummer Potter Palmer Edgar D.Jannotta Bryan S. Reid,Jr. Philip E. Kelley Edward Byron Smith,Jr. W. Paul Krauss Dempsey J. Travis Mrs. Brooks McCormick John R. Walter Mrs. Abra Prentice Wilkin

LIFE TRUSTEES Bowen Blair John T. McCutcheon,Jr. Andrew Mc ally III Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken

HONORARY TRUSTEES Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chicago William C. Bartholomay, President, Chicago Park District The Chicago Histori cal Society.is a privately endowed institution devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the city of Chicago, the state oflllinois, and selected areas of American history. It must look to its members and friends for continuing financial support. Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. Membership Membership is open to anyone imerested in the Society's goals and activities. Classes of annual membership and dues are as follows: Individual, $30; Family, $35; Student/Senior Citizen, $25. Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; a quarterly news lette1; Past-Times; a quarterly Calendar listing Society programs; invitations to special events; free admission to the building at all times; reserved seats at films and concerts in our auditorium; and a 10 percent discount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. Hours The Museum is open daily from 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M .; Sunday from 12:00 NOON to 5:00 P.M. The Library and Manuscripts Collection are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M . All other research collections are open by appointment The Society is closed on Christmas, ew Year's, and Thanksgiving days. Education and Public Programs Guided tours, slide lectures, gallery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from preschool through senior citizen, are offered. Admission Fees for Nonmembers Adults, $1.50; Children (6- 17), 50Â˘; Senior Citizens, 50Â˘. Admission is free on Mondays.

Chicago Historical Society

Clark Street at North Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60614

312-642-4600

FROM THE EDITOR Chicago and Braunau, Austria-a small border town along the Inn River that divides Austria and Germany-share the same dilemma. Both fall under the shadows of notorious men from their pasts. Adolph Hitler was born in Braunau 100 years ago; Al Capone, crime czar of America, resided in Chicago from 1923 to 1931. Though both cities try to downplay these men in their histories, the stigmas persist. But when memories are kept alive by physical reminders, coping with a past that can be neither celebrated nor forgotten is made even more difficult. Hitler's birthplace, a yellow house at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt, is now a school for handicapped children. Capone's home, a red-brick two-flat building at 7244 S. Prairie Avenue, remains a private residence undistinguished from others in the Park Manor neighborhood. Its recent nomination for official landmark status through the National Register of Historic Places raises important questions about whose history shou ld be preserved and about the value of landmarks. Marking land to memorialize an event or a person is as old as human history. Shrines, tablets, altars, monuments, and gravestones are scattered across the world. Some of Chicago's most important historic sites-Fort Dearborn, the O'Leary's barn, and the site of the first selfsustaining controlled nuclear chain reaction-are marked this way. Historians are interested in creating for the public an understanding of the past as a physical and emotional experience-as something real that shapes the present and the future. Historic landmarks help achieve this by lending a physicality to history. This is the heart of the historic preservation movement, which has made great strides nationwide during the last three decades. Since 1957 the City of Chicago alone has designated seventy-two neighborhood landmarks and fifteen landmark neighborhoods. But historic landmarks are created ultimately by political, not historical decisions. The Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks and the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council voted against nominating Capone's house for landmark status so as not to perpetuate Chicago's reputation as a crime-ridden city, but also because it is a political hot potato. The debate over the Capone home reveals that historical significance is often secondary to the public will. Italian-Americans protested it as an insult to their heritage, and South Side residents wanted neither tour bus invasions nor the monumentalization of a criminal at a time when crime is on the rise in the area. In this city, Capone is simply taboo. Public will can be a critical factor in landmark decisions, but economic factors and private property rights often override all other concerns. The decision to demolish Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange Building in 1971 despite emotional pleas from citizens, architects, the press, and historians to save it was based strictly on economics. The City Council had voted against landmark designation, claiming the city could not afford to buy and maintain the building, and the developers, realizing that the land was more valuable than the historic building, exercised their rights as property owners. Our history frequently falls prey to the bulldozer. This is a strong American tradition. Historic preservation has always been at odds with this nation's devotion to progress. Change is inevitable, and history, public will, economics, and future growth and development will often be in conflict. How cities will determine the proper balance between old and new isn't clear. Perhaps our taboo history is really the most meaningful to save. No plaque identifies Hitler's birtl1 place in Braunau, but recently a block of granite quarried from the former Mauthausen concentration camp appeared outside the home bearing this inscription: "For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again Fascism. Millions of dead are a warning." Chicago can learn from Braun~. li

Chicago's Cathedral of Commerce by Katherine Solomonson

With much fanfare, the Chicago Tribune in 1922 invited architects worldwide to compete for the design of its new office tower. Publ'ishers Robert McCormick and Joseph Patterson env'isioned a building that would suitably represent the Tribunes role as civic, cultural, and commercial leader. Part Gothic cathedral, part monument, the winning entry fused European tradition and American design. On July 6, 1925, the Chicago hibune invited its readers to visit the newly completed Tribune 1c)wer on North Michigan Avenue. According to the paper, twenty thousand people passed through the arched portal and entered a lobby filled with rich dark carving. Throngs crowded into the fastest e levators in town. From the observation deck twenty-five stories above the street, Gothic ornament and flying buttresses framed bird 's-eye views in every direction. Visitors could imagine themselves atop a medieval French cathedral, but the vantage point was far higher, and the panorama included not the ChampsElysees and monuments from past ages, but Chicago's Michigan Avenue, crowded Loop, and smoking factory chimneys. The publishers of the Chicago 1hbune intended the Tribune Tower to communicate their aspirations forthe newspaper and Chicago. On June 10, 1922, the paper's se\'enty-fifth anni\'ersary, the Tribune challenged architects from all nations to design the most beautiful building in the world, a challenge that de\'eloped into one of the largest and best-publicized competitions in architectural history. As an incenti\'e, they offe1-ed $100,000 in prizes: $50,000 for the first prize, $20,000 for the second, $10,000 for the third, and $2,000 for each of Len specially in\'ited competitors-the largest prizes ever offered in a design competition at the time. The Tribune gmÂˇe participating architects an unusual amount of latitude. The building was to be a model of practicality, but the architect was not expected to be

too concerned with the newspaper's spatial and mechanical requirements. Cost 1rns unlimited, and style was unspecified. The Tribune's primary goal was to select an exterior design that would convey certain abstract qualities. For the layperson, the newspaper explained it quite simply: "Make for the Tribune a picture of the most beautiful building in the modern world and the prize is won ." The building was to be a "glory to journalism" and have "pictorial qualities" that "boldly impart distinction, beauty, maje ty, inspiration ." It was up to the architect to determine what such a building might look like. Ultimately, the winning entry would closely reflect the personalities and goals of the Tribune's two editors. Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson, cousins and descendants of the newspaper's venerable owner and editor Joseph Medill, took over the paper in 191 l. Both men maintained a firm grip on a ll aspects of the business, from editorial policy and production to the details of expanding and running the corporation. l.Jntil Patterson moved to New York in 1925, they shared the editorship, alternating contro l of the editorial page month by month. Their different editorial styles reflected their personalities. Joseph Medill Patterson came from a prominent family and was educated at Groton and Yale like his cousin, Robert McCormick. Yet throughout his life he did his best to downplay his elite background. When Patterson publicly embraced socialism in 1906, he scandalized his family. Even after he abandoned socialism, his interest in the

The Chi cago Tribune '.5 soaring Gothic tower symbolized the heights to which the newspaper aspired. Photograph by Raymond W 7iÂˇowbridge. Gift of Edward and Kenneth Hedrich.

Katherine Solomon.son is a doctoral candidate in the history of art at Stanford University.

IN PRIZES TO ARCHITECTS Seventy-five years old today, The Tribun e seeks surpassing beauty in new home on Michigan Boulevard

HF. TRIBl -:\f. here w11h offers $100,000.00 in prizes for designs for a hui)J,ng to be erected on ,ts \aca nt lot at ~•fo rth Michigan Boulevard and Austin Avenue. Commemoration of our Seventy-fifth Birthday ie made in thrs manner for

three rcuoaa:

- tfl a.don, with a monument of ntdurlng beauty this city, In which The Tribune has prospered "" amazingly. - to crw.te a structure which wlll be an Inspiration and a ,no,kl for l(en<irallons of newspaper publishers. - to f>roUlde a new and beautiful home worthy of the wurld's l(natest newspaper. The conteM will ht· ,1111.kr the rule, 11f t he \m e r u.·;in ln,t1tutc of Architc<.· t~. \ .nm petiti on will he open .,nd 111 tn n .1r 1nn a l E.t<:h c11 m~t1tnr will ht· rctiw rcd ro "uhm 1t dr.1w 1ni:-~ 1ho winl,.!' tht.· \\ t· ,r ., nd ,1111th l.' lc\ ,tt 1on, .ind pc- r, 1x·t•f1 \ t' fn lm the 't1t1thwe11tt, o f ,I new bu1kl :nf;! to ht· c rct tn l 1u1 'l'lu: Tnh,in c', 11rc,1M: rt , ,It th e l.' 11rn t· r 11f \;, 1rth \l 1rh1 £an Blvd . and Au.,rin ,\ , c:. \rl' h1tn·t"i dc:iimnt,: l'om p lc re info rmati on J rc rcqucMcJ ro write to

Robert R. M cCm-mici,, Joseph M. Patternm. F..d ltl>n and Pub/is/ten

New-spa

SEVENTY

T O D A Y

Cathedral of Commerce masses, as he conceived of them, continued. He avoided the aristocratic trappings that were fashionable among his peers in favor of a frumpy wardrobe and a lack of pretension that enabled him to mix with the middle and lower classes. He liked to frequent cafeterias and places of popular amusement or dress as a bum to visit Chicago's seedy First Ward so that he cou ld listen in on conversations and find out what peop le were thinking. Yet he kept a distance from those he worked with, and few addressed him by his first name, even after many years. Patterson once instructed architect Raymond Hood, who was design ing a home for him in Ossining, ew York, to: "Make it look as if I didn't have any money." When it was comp leted, Patterson's Ossining estate, although unostentatious in appearance

compared with the homes of his peers, could only have been built by a wealthy man. According to Tribune cartoonist John McCutcheon, Robert Rutherford McCormick was more representative of his class than was Patterson. Throughout his life, McCormick culti\'ated a properly genteel appearance. His welltailored clothing was made in London and Paris, and his accent retained the slight British inCTection he had developed during his early years in England . Like Patterson, he was known for his aloofness, but he had little of Patterson's interest in mingling with the masses, incognito or otherwise. While Patterson chose to begin his military career as a private and work his way up, McCormick began as a commissioned major. His mother, Katharine Medill McCormick, was

Left, on its seventy-fifth anniversary the Tribune challenged architects from all nations to design the most beautiful building in the world. It became onP of the largest competitions in architectural history. 1iuo hundred and four entries came in from twenty-three countries by the final deadline on Oecember 1, 1922; f ifty-niru more arrived late,: Above, Joseph Patterson (left) and Robert McCormick (in light suit, right) presided at the comers/one laying ceremony at the Tribunes plant, erected just east of the tower site in 1920. 7

Chicago History, Spring 1989

The steel structure of the tower is sheathed in 13, 160 tons of Indiana limestone. Decorative elements, such as these carved and ready to set, are concentrated at the base and top of the building.

proud of her family's noble lineage, which she claimed to have traced to Sir Walter Scott. McCormick was proud of his father's descent from Virginia gentlemen , and he characterized himself as a member of a truly American aristocracy based on achievement and a concern for the future of the nation. A profile of McCormick published in the magazine The Chicagoan in 1929 described his presence at the Tribune in aristocratic terms: "Thus born to wealth, and to power, and to the prospects of increasing this birthright, young Robert R. McCormick dutifully entered upon the obligations of an esquire of the new nobility:' Yet McCormick referred to himself as a member of the middle class, not of society. McCormick and Patterson shared a contempt for those who rested comfortably on inherited wealth and status. Despite their apparent differences, they both worked hard to develop and 8

expand the 7hbun e. each contributing his own strengths and interests. To maintain unity, l\1cCorn1ick and Pauerson made what they called an "iron-bound" ag1-eemenl pledging ne,Âˇer to disagree, and prmÂˇiding that, if Lhe 7 should, a third party would be called in to make a decision by which they both would abide. McCormick and Patterson set out to broaden the Tribune's readership through advertising, promotions, and news featun"s. At the turn of the century, the 7hbune had characteri7ed itself as the "business man's newspaper," and aimed its contellls primarily al a well-educated and prosperous readership. McCormick , on the other hand, believed that "a newspaper must be sensitive to the pleasures, hopes and fears of all people. When the editor is sympathetic with the interests of every honest person, from ditch digger to multimillionaire , his paper will be truly great." McCormick established a department of

Cathedral of Commerce

Cut stones were shipped to North Pier Terminal in preparation for setting on the tower's exterior.

prnmoLion which organized events Lo benefit the community \\'hile publicizing the newspaper. Patterson excelled at devising promotions and features \\'ilh public appeal. He look charge of the comic section and was responsible for introducing successful strips such as 'The Gumps," "Winnie Winkle," "Smiuy," and "Little Orphan Annie." As editor of the Sunday pape1~ Patterson developed magazine-style articles and stories, serials, and advice columns. Sunday circulation more than doubled, reaching 827,028 by 1922. Pauerson also concocted 7ribune-sponsored contests that encouraged public participation and interest and gave the paper"free a(hÂˇertising,"as it was known in the trade . In the burgeoning advertising age oflhe 1920s, these tactics became common among publicity-seeking By 1q22 the 'fribune considered it elf a masscirculation paper, boasting that it reached the majority of the middle class, nearly all of the

prosperous, and many of the poor. Yel the Tribune did not substantially change its image; it continued Lo identify with the elite, presenting itself as the best paper for the "best classes of Chicago and the Cemral West." On June 12, 1922, a full-page announcement of the competition stated: 'Tribune readers are the men and \\'Omen who are on the up-grade, who have made money and are making money-but 1,Âˇho are also spending money and who are receptive LO new ideas." The rapidly expanding newspaper soon outgrew its old building at Madison and Dearborn streets in the Loop , and the time had come to find a new location. In 1919 the Chicago Tribune purchased land on Pine Street (later renamed ~Iichigan A,Âˇenue) just north of the Chicago River, outside the city's \\'ell-established business district. Far from elegam, the neighborhood had an unsavory reputation because of its saloons. Located near the railroad tracks, it supported 9

Chicago History, Spring 1989

Most entries relied h£avily on historical symbolism. Saverio Dioguardi of Italy embellish£d his with references to a triumphant past.

An illuminated orb, perhaps a "glory to journalism, " crowns Chicagoan Alexande,· Spitz's more mode.st proposal.

some industry. The Kirk Soap Factory stood to the south of the site; malt houses, to the north. However, McCormick and Pauerson knew that the Michigan Avenue Bridge would soon be completed and that plans were undenvay to develop the street into an e legant Parisian-style boulevard much like the Champs-Elysees. On October 15, 1919, McCormick reported to the board of directors plans for "the biggest and most efficient newspaper printing establishment in the world"" and for another building that would be "the world's most beautiful office tower." The plant was completed in 1920 . For the design of the new office building that was to stand in front of the plant, Patterson suggested a competition . In an exchange of private memos,

l\fcCorrnick readily agreed , noting that the e\'ent would both publicize the Tribune and help boost real estate \'alues in the new location. To the public, the Tribune emphasi7ed that the purpose of the competition was to provide an inspiration to _journalists, to establish standards for and encourage beauty in architecture, and to contribute to the beautification of Chicago. Both public and pri\'ate agendas determined McCormick's and Patterson's handling of the competition and their selection of the winning design. The Chicago Tribune Competition, with the many articles it generated in the Tribune and in other publications, was the grandest of the paper's publicity schemes. The articles the Tribune published during the competition were

Cathedral of Commerce intended Lo inform Lhe public ofLhe significance of the competition and the new building. Chicago architect and critic Irving K. Pond, writing about skyscrapers in 1921, described a "community of idealism" where the designer and the beholderofasuccessful building must have a common background and experience, a similar knowledge of the past, and a common reaction to social and political conditions. Through the many articles it published during the competition, the Tribune attempted to define and reinforce a community of values and ideal Lo be shared by its readers. McCormick and Patterson intended Lo erect the most beautiful building in the world, but they wanted to be sure that people would recognize it as such. As a rule, the 7ribune liked LO know who its readers were and what they thought. For marketing and advertising purposes, the publishers divided Chicago into forty-eight districts. Canvassers moved from block to block, questioning people about everything from ethnic background, line of business, and club memberships to whether they shopped downtown or in their local neighborhoods. The Tribune also encouraged its readers Lo write in about their experiences and opinions. Throughout the competition, the paper solicited its readers' opinions about architecture. Nearly every Sunday, the rotogravure section featured a full-page photographic spread illustrating monuments from various eras and continents. The Tribune asked reader. to study these images and send in their \'iews on the best models for the new building so "that a consensus may determine just \\"hat is Chicago's idea of Lhe most beautiful building in Lhe world." People responded \\"ith a \'ariety of letters and dra\,Âˇings, suggesting e\'et)'Lhing from the log cabin to the medieval guild hall. Though a public consensus was not forthcoming, the paper tried to guide its readers toward its own view of good design. The publishers were already convinced of the paper's ability to affect public opinion and alter the course of events. By 1921 the departments of service, entertainment, and instruction received hundreds of thousands of letters a year and thus helped to establish the newspaper as an authority. The newspaper regarded itself as influential on a grander scale as well. During the recession of 1921, for example, the Tribune staged a campaign by which it

This cartoon by Frank King was one of three whimsical entries submitted by Tribune cartoonists.

claimed to have "influenced the thought of the entire business community in the United States in a constructive manner and [to have] largely assisted in averting a threatened panic." The Tribune's publishers wanted to extend the newspaper's influence from commerce into culture. On Sundays, for example, Patterson published color reproductions of paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago. This prompted Burton Rascoe, who worked for the Tribune at the time, to make a rather dry comment about Patterson's sense of "obligation as promoter of cultural 11

Chicago History, Spring 1989

Tribune Tower guidebooks touted tlu! sweeping "vistas of beauty" availabk lo visitors from the tower~ observatory. Drawing by Birch Burde/le Long.

interests among the masses." The captioned photographs of buildings such as Antwerp Cathedral, Phi ladelphia City Hall, SL. Peter's Basilica, and the Woolworth Building that appeared in the Sunday rotogravure section educated readers according to the Tribune's conception of fine architecture. In its handling of the competition, the Tribune presented itself as an arbiter of good design, a role that in the past had primarily been the preserve of cultural institutions and architectural organizations. The competition, and the articles and photographs promoting it, simultaneously mass-marketed the Chicago Tribune's definition of culture and the image of the paper as a force in the cultural sphere. The education of the public was an important step toward the achievement of one of the competition's primary goals-the beautification of Chicago. "The Tribune contest," according to an editorial, " ... is intended to stimulate interest in the establishment of a high standard of architectural beauty in the bui lding and rebuilding of 12

the city, and this interest must be susta ined not only among arch itects and their clients but by arousing the genera l public." To give additional credence to the competition as a civic effort, the Tr-ibune published testimonials from civic leaders who praised the newspaper's efforl. Charles Wacker, chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission , lauded the competition: "This is of great importance to the future of the city of Chicago, not only for the direct result , but also for its inlluence toward the finer and better city of the future." Several prominent civic leaders served on an advisory committee that re viewed the entries and made recommendations to the jury. The Chicago Tribune believed itself to have been instrumental to the city's growth during the seventy-five years of the paper's existence, and it wished to continue to shape the city's future . By boosting Chicago, the Tribune boosted itself. Through the competition, the Tribune also hoped to improve Chicago's national and international image. By the early 1920s Chicago was receiving good press for its cultural institutions and for its City Beautiful efforts. Eve n so, it was still best known as a commercial giant, the "Hog Butcher for the World .. . . City of the Big Shoulders," in Carl Sandburg's words. McCormick identified fiercely with Chicago, and his memoirs reveal that while he was at Groton he felt snubbed for being a midwesterner. Perhaps he had reason for his defensiveness. Cass Gilbert, who designed the Gothic Woolworth Building in New York, said of the Midwest: "There are not uglier building on the face of the earth than som e of those in the central pan of the United States. They are at the same time sordid, cheap, dirty, and extravaganL." Chicago was no exception , although Gilbert conceded that the Tribune

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1t ·.rl l111dd1111-; wrniltl 11 · vc ·.rl 1twll .1, ,I

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\rrlf I If ,111 ,111 l1111 ·c 1,, l1t1 w c v1· 1, , l111 w nl 1111' 111 , p1

ilw 1111d l'l '.! O, l1fc·d tllC' l1rl11111C· l11w1 · 1, 111.1111 ·, 1,1

ration ol great monuments ol the past. On December 2, 1922, the Tribune awarded the first prize of $50,000 to John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood for their Gothic design . Not everyone agreed that the Tribune had made a good choice in the Gothic tower. Louis Sullivan, a pioneer in skyscraper design, was horrified by the flying buttresses and masonry piers

considered it worth a visit. Within six months of it opening, 42,155 people had paid twenty-five cents each to go to the top. The finished tower, as well as the competition, were good publicity for the newspaper. It may at first seem strange that the Tribune would select a design derived from European prototypes. McCormick and Patterson were 13

Raymond W. Trowbridge came to Chicago in 1908 and practiced as an architect until 1923. When his Jailing health demanded a less sedentary occupation he turned to photography, his hobby of many years. In his commissions for both architectural firms and private clients, he recorded the interiors and exteriors of hundreds of Chicago's buildings. He died unmarried at the age offifty in 1936. Trowbridge left a legacy of more than 5,000 striking architectural photographs, and the collection of 5 x 7 glass negatives is now part of the Prints and Photographs Collection of the Chicago Historical Society, a gift of Edward and Kenneth Hedrich. Among these negatives are several boxes devoted to the Tribune Tower made during or shortly after its construction. His photographs, often taken from angles that other photographers miss, reveal the monumental spirit of the tower. A selection follows.

Chicago History, Spring 1989

The allegorical carvings on the stone screen above the door include images of Tribune editors Patterson and McCormick and tower architects Howells and Hood. Drawing by Birch Burdette Long.

known for their outspoken patriotism. The Tribune's masthead included Stephen Decatur's proclamation, "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." At the conclusion of the competition, the Tribune proudly stated that the outcome of the competition, with its American winner, established the superiority of American design. Despite these attitudes, a connection with European traditions was important to the Tribune, and the tower reflected this. The Tribune made its preference for Europeaninspired design clearly known throughout the competition. In an article published the day the competition was announced , the Tribune speculated on the designs that would be submitted: Will the drift be toward classicism or toward the ultramodern) For itself the Tribune sees naught incompatible between ancient beauty and modern uses, for it believes that the ancient type can be so modified and adapted that, in the application of it to new uses, no incongruity will result. Its beauty will remain , but it will find a new expression.

In this regard, the Tribune was well within the mainstream of architectural taste. Although 20

some architects and critics felt that only a new American style could be appropriate for the American skyscraper, others believed that a purely American style could evolve only gradually over time. In the meantime, a variety of traditional styles could be adapted to the skyscraper with original and beautiful results. The Tribune wanted to build a skyscraper that would take its place among the greatest monuments of past ages. This was not a particularly new idea; comparisons between skyscrapers and ancient monuments abound in contemporary writings. When the Singer Building was erected in New York in 1908, a promotional book went so far as to illustrate it standing proudl y among the world 's most famous buildings. The Chicago Tribune welll the Singer Company one beuer. The Tribune Tower not only stands among the major buildings of the past, it stands upon them-quite literally. Fragments of structures ranging from Cologne Cathedral to the Great Wall of China were embedded in the base of the tower. During World War I, McCormick himself picked up the first fragment after the shelling of Arras, and the rest were gathered at his request (by "honorable means" only) by the newspaper's foreign correspondents. Pieces of the world's great monuments thus became the foundation of a new American skyscraper, considered comparable to them in beauty but surpassing them in stature. A tower with such a base suited the Tribune's self-image. At the beginning of the competition, a full-page advertisement honoring the Tribune's seventy-five years of a chievement characterized the company as standing"finnly grounded in a splendid past, but looking forward .. .. " In using these fragments , the Tribune tried to appropriate the power associated with the great monuments of the past. The tower, with its historical style and fragment-studded base, also reflected the Tribune's view of world history and Chicago's place in it. Americans had long cherished the concept of the United States as heir to European civilization. But for the Tribune, World War I had finalized the bequest. During the competition, the Tribune suggested to its readers that European civilization had reached its twilight. Americans were aware of Europe's devastation; popular publications ran articles and photographs of the wartorn cathedrals of France and Belgium. Many

Calhfdml o/C:mnmaCI' Chic,1g-o\ geographic cll'stim ,,ith a 1elid 111,1p p10111inl'nlh displa,ed mt·t the i11fo1111a1ion tounter in tlte l"ribune l1rner\ lohh, . 111 the 'fri/J11111'. Chirag-o\ assumption of' \\oriel leader,lt i p in both rom 111c1-re ,rncl cu It u re ,ecn1ed im·, itable. For the 1,orld\ leading cit\. the frih11111• would settle for nothing less than the 111os1 hea11tif'ul building in the modern world . At the ti111c. mmt people a~,ociatl'd beaul1 in archi1ect11re with historic or11anwnta1io11. 'fribw11· reader Victoria \da111, B,rrber of \\'innetka , for exa111plc, e,pres,ed thi, in a lener 10 the new,paper: Thi, l' llll ,llH l' ol lo1l'ig-n 1,dt·n1 ,hould hn·.ik drn,n the 1cka 1h.11 tht' cloll,11 ,ign i, hl',I ll'Pll''l'lllt·d 1>1 1hc (Ollllll<>ll. (Olllllll'lli.tl. ,qu,1n·. u1il11a11 .111 10 till' la,t nitkl'I.

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of huilcl111g.

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p1l',l' llll·cl on thl' ,nl'<'ll 11i1h ,i1·11, ol 111.ig111fi<c111 huild111g,. h10,1d pl.11c1, ,utd \\(JJJcll'dul ,1,11u.111 in

I· un>pc ,u1d "iouth \111cri< ,1:, \Jl' 1ht·1 1101 till' 111.ijor

,1th,·

lnbu11~ 1imon- lahm,;, cmd nght) was ,ma a popular 11b1rrm/r,r) Jor tnurul! mu/ U11rng,1ml!>, 11/i•rwg bml\-r,1· Vll'M of 11,e lak,• am/ th,· Cl/) jmmtd Ir, Gothu 11nw111nit mu/ fl.1111g bul/Jie lop

p,11 I of the ,1111 ,l< tion, th,11 lo,tcl the ,hip, 11 i1h tou1i,r-~ ... Let us fenl'nlh hopl' the judge, 11ill 1101 ht· ,o 1mh11cd 1111h thl' \1n e1 ic .111 ,en,c ol 111ili11 H'J ,th

11,·w·,. l>rrcuw!{, nght. I,:, Birch JJ,mlt·U,. I.mtg

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American soldier , Colonel ~lcC01·mirk among them. h<td ,, iUle sed the destruction fir th and. In the roLOgra\ ure un \ of great building publi heel during the ompetition, the Tnbune indudecl a drm,ing of t\miem Cathedral as it appeared before the war with thi aption: .•• it

"a, a man el or imag111auon. clramatit

lon,umm,Hc <r ,lf1,m ,t 11,hip...

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mend1elnwcl in incll'>cr11111naung 1ui11. ' I he gla., and the ,t atut·, ,hatte1ed 111 h ,1gme111,. the roof, con,umccl

h, fi1t•, tht· l,Ined ,totw, laluned and flaking homh in ,1 cln·an ram on blood ,1,1 incd pa,em<:'nt,.

\\ 1th Europe r,nagecl IH war , the L'nited . tales could tal..c on the mantle of \\<>1 lcl leaclcr,hip. !he [i?htlll(' (cl!Tiecl Lhi, (011C<.'J>l \Lill funher. :'-:ol only had orth America supplanted Europe, but the Mississippi Valley was in the process of overtaking the economic primacy of the eastern seaboard. Because of its geographic location, Chicago was destined to be the natural "pivot or America, " the center or radiating circles of influence. Several years after the new building's construction, the Tribune i 11 ustrated 21

Par, e /.; i r, h I

TIIE THIB - .11 \E - 1021

TRIBUNE TOWER \\Tl LL IIAVE STONES FROl\l WORLD-FAl\lOUS STRUCTURES ( hw of thr n1an~ inlt,.rP~tinK ft>ul Uf(h-. of TII<' Trih111w Tow<'r will l••.th<· pt•rn11111<•11I ,•,!1ihit ion of :--lon<'!'I from v.orld-famolh buildin,cs. Thl•,1,.l ...,,on(''\. v.hic.:h an•?uuv. l••inl( l(Hlh<'r<'<l)•~ corr«•spund<•nt,, of Th,• ( :t,in1110.Trih1111c Forl'il(n '\1•w, :--t•n i<'t' . 11n• lo IM' imht•<ldt•<l in thl' '"'" uf llw 11111in l'rllri11w1' of TIii' Tu"<'r 11nd "ill I•• 0111• of 1111• 1111iq11<' and umNrnl ,•,hihib of lh1• "orld. \lrt•ll(I~ . a,·,·urdinl( lu 11,•rb. lxid,frll of lh<' olli,·t• of I hi' 1,uildin)(. I hirlt'<'II <lorll'< h11\ l' bt•t•n rt'(·t•i,f'd. TY.t'ht> of tht•-.t• tlft' shown in I h<' ahm <' pil'I ur,•. Tht'~ htl\ ,. l••<•n ,,•nl fru111 tll<' folio" inl( l,w·u lion< : I. Oltl ( ;,.n,·rnl Post Olli,·c· Buil1li11µ. Dublin. lrt'lun<l. :--t•,·,m•d '" John S1t·1·h•. IA.ut<l(HI c-orres1wu1dt•nl. .. '2 . Stone• from l lu111lt•I ·, ( :11,1lt•. 11<·1,inl(or. D1•11111urk . ,.,111 h~ John Slt•Plc. :1. Part of lht• Jup1111<•,1• Lu111,·r11 from 1111• Shrinl' of llihiju DaijinJlUII, Tokio. J 11p1111. llo<lt•ri<'k I l. \I 111111•<011. Tokio

1·orre:-tpornlcnl . M't·t1rt•tl it.

4. Fro111 ol,h•,1

huilding 11I Pri111·1•l011 l 'nhersih. 5. Stunt•· from Old ( :hu1w•I. '\ alt• l ni, t•rsil\. st•nl II\ \\ illiu111 11. Fit·ld of lht•

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\!un,•: Hu, n101ul • ·.,. ,ulrit·k. u,•u r ,•u,,.1 ,·orr,•,,.. 1•u1u.lt•nl of Tiu• Tril,unt•. "'"''HrinJ,t u .oolori•· front tht· l'nrlht· non In \th,•n-. . Tiu• 1,tu11rcl iM lu-lpin,-t him .

li. Stom· from \\ t•slmirt<IPr \hl11•,. Lon - Hi,.ht: Th" llr•·ul ~ull of c:llinu ul '-unl-.o"'" Pu"'"· Jr "tit'"' ru•ur lwr,• thul (:hurlt•M Uuilt•, don, ,..,,·url'd I" John Slt'dt•. · M"C.'Urf'tl u ~Ion(" fur Tt.r 'l'o'4t'r. Th,• frtt.; i. Slon<• from· a "indo" of Edinhurµh nH·nl !Wnl ,n,·r h~ \Ir . flail•·:\ ii- 1uar1 of lh•· Cnstl<•. l•:dinhurjlh, :--t·ol larul. ,1•11t I>, uritcinul ~an huilt in thf" , ... ,H 211 n. t. . John Sl!•pft•. · X. Stum• frorn 1111' old<'st part of tl1t• huildinl( of lhe Colo11m• Dorn . ( ;Prma11, . Hod,•rick \lulht•«111. for 1'\!1111plt•. "rill·, John Clu~ ton . of lhl' Europl'Htl Edilin;1. !11t• follo"inµ lt·llt•r frnnr Tokio. J11p1111 . kno"II '" lh<' llihi~u Dniji11g1111 and SPIii it. •· t rmu,u~t·d tinull~ to #•'1'1 a pipc•1 of i, dost• lo tht• l111p,•riul llolt•I. !J. From '\otrf' Dunu• CallH'drnl, P11ris. tliP nin t'd ,tonl· frwn u lunh•rn thut This slom• t·ome.s from 0111• of I he Jluhl,•, "Tl11• t•ur1 hqu11k1• ,h11lh'r<'d 1lw lan-.;lood for .._j \ l11111drt•d H'ar.., in I bt• of th,• windo"s of a d1111w•I in till' 1111,t• lt•rn 111111 llw fin• lhal '""Pl the ri t~ c-ourl uni of orui of I IH' 1iwin lt mplc•, fadnJl soulh. splintt•rt•d !ht• ha,t•. u !",rt ion of "hi,·h of lx1111111kura. 1IH' Enl(akuji T,•mph•. ha, IM•t•n ,enl ''"'- l'lw cunPd fill• 10. Stone from Taj \lahul , \µrn , I ruliu . '"'cum• (.. ighl~ ~ear.., u,-ro this lantt.. rn ure., 011 it un• h11ddhi,1 fiµun•s. u11d John St,..clc st.•eure<l ii. "'" pri>,t•nt<•d lo 1h,• Tokio hru11d1 of t hi' ,10111· ,ho", I lu• Pff1·,·1 of t ht• fir~ 11. StonP from Tru11djlu•i111 ( :11 1lu•dral, tlu• (;rnnd Sltriru•, ,,f 1,t•. \\IH'rt•in Hrt.. and quak,•" '\ornu~. built in 1'200 \. D .. also , .. nt kPpt I IH' Tim,• Sc<Tt•d Tn•u,ur,•, of h1 John S1cele. the Ju1ltuu.. ..,,. Throru-. a :--word, 1uirror Ouilt•J St•nd, lli,lory 1111rl .it'" Pl. 1111 of rlh inc oriµin. In tht• 12. Frorn lhc (;real \\ all of China. porHt>µardin~ th(• ,1011,• fru111 tlr<• ( ;r,'11l \\ 11ll Tokio brand1 of 1h1• ( ;rund Shrin<'. tion lo tht• soul hwesl of '\anko" P""· of ( :hi 1111. ( :l111rle, Dail,·,. Fur E1hl ,·orreg. "hid, is. IJ\ th,•""'· llw lwurl ,hrin,· ( :hurle., Daill'~ . l'Pkin rorrt•s1x1111l•·nl. ,1•nl · JHlll(h•nl. "rit,·, : of lht• Shi,i10 f11i1l,-lwfor,• "bid.1 th,• thi~ slonc. Erupt•ror or hi, lllt'-.."'t'llJlt'r" llJlrlou rwt• • rtw priudpul r,•puir 1111d r1"'"011",tn1dion or I.A'llt•r~ T,·11 1li,-1or) Tfw (;rt•,11 \\ ull. hm,1•\1"r , wa~ ut lht• 1w11ith to tilt' lmpniul \11 n•,1<,r, 11n)lhi111( of of llw \1iu,: tlyna,I) , i11 IIH• IH•riod I u;;,_ :--t1111c of lhf' lcl l<•r-; w ril l<•n In I h,• ,·orr,•silllJ)(>rlaru•p aff<'t'I inl( I l1t• I 1111)(•rial J.l()h. umlt•r llw E1111wror.; lt,i,•11 ·r-..uu,: urul pond,•nts ,md telling how lh•·~ " ''"' uhlt• F11111il) . 1111 of I ht• i111porl11nl n111rri11Jl1's 11 -.iuo Tuuil . Lu obtain stone.-; un• , er~ ir1tt•rt•..;,linµ-. of Tokio lakt• pl,,,·,•. Tl11• ,hrint' is " It v.us ul thi-. 1w•ri1Ki lh.tt !Ill' frn1,,tmt·11l i;;.-nt 1

for U."i(> in Tlw Trih1111t• lobby wn .. hurit>d in 1lw r1•nu1 .. 1r11d1•d v.ttll. tlll' ruin .. or tlu- olcl v.oll h,1vi11Jt l,f•1•11 tt-.t•d "" lill,•r ror tlw 1u•w ,,. ,, 11 . tilt' 0111..r JH1r1io11-. or ¥1ohi,·l1 ¥1ot•r,• of llw ,-:rn) liurn,-tl hri1 ·k, for v.hid1 thP C:hiiu•-.4•

-...pn• fu11101h. ·\ta 1H1111t 1u•,.1r 1hr tup of tht• 11u1u11l t1iu It, tlu• ,ou1hv.1•,1 of "-1111kow Pa-.~ tlw rt•c·o11,1nu·lt'<I Y,11II j.., fnlhng into rui11"l It -...u -. lwr1• I 11rn·o\.t•n•cl ,t•vt•rul l11yrri,, of the

lillinJC und ('Xlnwlrd 11w frn{lmrnt "hic·h I u rn .. t"ndin~. Chi1lf''"it" hi-.lory ,Lulf>~ thot :tl llu· oricinul h11ildi11~ or 1)11· wnll nll 1111 •11 "f'rt• -.umruon1•d onl) ont• 1111111 lwing lt·ft on i•ud1 furm.

l').po-.1'ff

( :olo1wl \l e( :ormi,·k. in hi, lei l<'r rl'que,ting- lht• co-opt·rHI ion of t lw fort'i1,t11 <'orrt•sponrlt·nt"" in ~utht•rin,I,{ lht• ,lomi"", g-u,c i11,lru<"li1111, lo 1111• t•lfp,·t lhal 11111) honorabl,· 1111•1111< ,hould lw ('111plo)ed.

Cathedral of Commerce To Vi ctoria Ada m s Barbe r a nd ma ny oth e rs, th e "squ a re bo xes" preva le nt in C hicago's co mm e rcia l a rchitecture signifi e d utility, whil e th e o rn ate buildin gs a broa d we re bea utiful. To brin g C hi cago o ut o f a n e ra assoc ia ted prim a ril y with bi g sh o uld e r s a nd h og butch e rs, th e Tribune wa nted to se lect a building th at wo uld be wid e ly recognized as bea utiful as we ll as utilita ri a n. From a wid e range o f poss ibiliti es, McCo rmi ck a nd Patterso n chose a Gothi c d es ign beca use it re fl ecte d th e va lu es th ey es poused for th e Tribune a nd for th e city o f C hi cago. Th e Tribune wa nted to assoc iate itse lf, a nd th e city o f C hi cago, with va lu es th at tra nsce nd e d th e co mm e rcia l a nd utilita ri a n: "A ne wspa pe r pl a nt ca n be ne ith e r a Pa rth e no n no r a Mil a n cath e dra l, but it o ug ht to be a bl e to utte r a m essage just as s piritu a li zin g as th ose g lo ri o us stru ctures utte r." Whil e a c lass ica l stru cture co uld be "spiritu a li zin g," accordin g to th e Tribune, th e Go thi c style had ecc les ias ti ca l co nn o tati o ns th a t mad e it especia ll y so . To th e Tribune, H owe ll s a nd Hood 's d es ign , whi ch was m o d e led a fte r th e Butte r Towe r o f Ro ue n Cath edra l, was unmista kab ly eccles ias tica l. Th e arc h ed po rta l cove re d with a ll egori ca l ca rYings reca ll e d the m o num e nta l e nt ra nce to a church . Th e lo bby, with its a lta rlike in fo rm a ti o n co unte r, was e mbe llished with wh at th e Tribune d esc ribe d as cath edra l-like carvings in sto ne a nd oa k. Th e to p o f th e skysc rape r sprouted fl ying buttresses a nd a bunda nt o rn a me nt, re minding th e Tribune o f a n "e mbattl ed cha pe l." Th e Tribun e To \\'e r, with its unbroke n sha ft an d e la bo ra te crown , stood as C hi cago's ve rsio n o f E uro pe's g rea tes t c hurch to we r s. With d esc ripti o n s co nta ining re li gio us a llu sio ns-" th ere is inspi rati o n in th at tre m e nd o us swee p upwa rd , a nd it e nds in be ne di cti o n"- Tribune arti cles ex pl a in ed to th e pu b li c th e se nse o f "s piritu a l as pi ra ti o n" th e ve rti ca l to we r 's c hurchlike a pp ea r a n ce co nveyed. In co nn ecting spiritua l va lu es " Âˇith th e Gothi c towe 1~ th e Tribune drew u po n a we ll -estab li sh ed traditi o n. Wh e n used fo r church es a nd uni,Âˇe rsiti es, th e Gothi c style suggeste d a spiritu a l a nd co nte m p la tive e n clave aga in st m a te ri a li sm , a Ill a literal reference to the tower's relationship to the great monuments of the world, fragments of ancient buildings were imbedded in the lower wall of the structure.

cloi stered re fu ge fro m th e fas t-paced , mo neymaking world. Ge orge Ni chol s sa id o f th e inn e r co urts o f th e Me m o ri a l Qu ad ra ngle a t Ya le Uni ve rsity: "Th e re is so m e thin g like a sp iritua l revela ti o n to have such love liness in th e midst o f a tow n- to ste p fro m a twe nti e th-ce ntu ry stree t into the thirtee nth ce ntury, to excha nge th e bu sy ways of comm e rce fo r th e se clu s io n o f aca d e mi c sh ad es . ... " Bo th McCo rmi ck a nd Pa tt e r so n were Ya le alumni , a nd it is pe rhaps no co in cid e nce th at th e Tribun e 1o we r bears som e rese m bla nce to Ya le's H a rkn ess Towe r. Wh e n u sed fo r skyscr a pe rs, so me o f th e m eanings a nd fo rms associa ted with th e Go thi c style we re ad ap ted to th e corpo rate wo rld. In Harper's Monthly in 19 11, Mildred Sta pl ey wro te of m e di eva l m e rca ntil e va lu es e mbod ied in skysc ra per d es ign: "We, twe nti e th ce ntury h e te roge neo us Ame ri ca ns, a re th e na tura l inh e ritors of this old co mm e rc ia l s p irit a nd th e a rc hitec ture that acco mpa ni ed it. . . . By m o re mod e rn me thods we m ad e th e Go thi c towe r o f old Eu ro pe a monum e nt to this very thing." Th e Gothi c Woo lwo rth Building, co nstru cted in New Yo rk in 19 13, was dubbe d th e "Ca th edra l o f Co mm e rce ," as "a lo fty exampl e of th e best poss ibiliti es in hum a n na ture, eve n wh e n e ngaged in m e rca ntil e pursuits." Co mm e rce, wh e n ho used in a Gothi c skyscra per, was e levated to a spiritual plan e. Th ese id eas pe rsisted into th e 1920s, but th e Tribune too k th e m o ne te p furth e r by e mphasi zing th e s pi r itu a l over th e comm e rc ia l. Th e Tribune explained that the Gothic style was selected "to lift o ur new ho m e out of the category of commercia l profit-makers," suggesting that Chicago, too, h ad transcended that category. J. B. Carrington, edito r o f Architecture, concurred. "We have too o ften bee n prone," he said, "to think of Chicago as pre emin e ntl y the embodiment of our so-call e d nati o nal spirit of commercialism, of restl ess and unmitigated materialism, of the e ssen ce of modernism and civi c selfishness, indiffere nt to all but the great god of business and bunk. But we d o ff our hat to the splendid enterprise, th e fine , uncontaminated idealism that is expressed in th e Tribune's attitude." T he towe r e mbo di e d certa in milita ry qu a lities as \\"e ll. Th e Tribune d escribe d it as "militar y Gothi c,'Âˇ Cro\\'n ed with "fl ying b uttresses whi ch , in th e ir to ta lity g ive th e e normous powe r of ba ttl e m e nts . .. . " Th e Tribune like d Howe lls's

Chicago History, Spring 1989

hu i iw· .shu1<, rl ( u orkili!,J of tf.t Tou•er .'1J a m11•sp,1p.-r plant. , •ore ho11• the arra11ge-1,.mt,· of Jep.1rhnemr. ar d.J, ribed in t/.e ,mom• /' 11() in,~ text, make f11 r 111,1-.: i111v111 effi, io,q, .. 111d /,,,,,, t!,r flo,,n of tf,1 l'/,olf (rl,e l'/,111t ii ti,( /,,11 rp,1rti1mtotl,ui~/,1 ,. rt Coli'f in111111s re it/, r(1r~ ,- ,ro11di11~ //n,m of ti, '/ f1U

Although the beauty and inspiration of the lower seemed the primary concern of Tribune Tower guidRbooks, they also boasted of the building's practicality and layout.

assertion that the building \\'as designed to express the ·'.journalistic ideal or baule and ser-\'ice." Such martial allusions probabl}' appealed to McCormick and Pauerson , who retained their military titles of colonel and captain long after vVorld \Var I \,·as O\'er. Memories of the war \\'ere still fresh, and references to it appear in the details of the Tribune Towe1~ Figures commemorating McCormick and Patterson in the line of cl UL)' appear on the screen m·er the do01~ a bronze tablet in the lobby names Tribune employees \\'ho served in the wa1~ and the fleurs--de--lys of France 24

that appear below the fourth floor windows reminded visitors of the deeds of American servicemen on French battlefields. As civilians, McCormick and Patterson led editorial assaults. During the early 1920s, for example, they waged war against what was then called the Great Depression with their "1921 Will Reward Fighters" campaign. This program, replete with military metaphors, awarded $100 for true stories of successful "1921 Fighting Salesmanship." ln addition to its religious and military associations, the Gothic to\\'er also represented lcader-sh ip. The paper endo\\'ccl the toll'cr ll'ith the qualities of a ruler, describing it as "composed, uncluucred , commanding... . " Tc> some, th e Gothi c St)'le suggested the leadership ofan aristocratic elite . Ralph Adams Cram , one of the most widely read proponents or the Cot hie SL)'le, articulated this connection most explicitly. In his vie\\', the Middle Ages was a time when all social classes were bound into an organic democratic social order ruled b)' an enlightened aristocraq. He hoped to sec a re\'ival in modern America of the values he associated with Gothic architecture in the i\lidclle Ages, The connection bet\\'een the Tribun e Ti:>we r and medie\'al ~ocict) 1,·as not lost on contemporaries. According to Th e Fn'e111a11: "Particular!) happy is the symbolism of its ponderous Gothic head-piece with its simulacra or hea\'y stone supports, , . appropriate I) reminiscent of mediae\'al \\'ays and thought, and of the old feudal order." Chicago's Rwtl H1tate NPws also picked up on th ese associations but ll'ith a different emphasis: 'This ne1r and magnificent departure in sk)SCrape1· archite cture gi\·es almost a touch of royalt) to America\ foremost center of ci\·ic democracy.'' The Gothic to\\'er Illa) ha\'e corresponded to McCormi(k's outward st yle as an American aristocrat, but it also suited the leadership rol e both cousins claimed for the 7hbu11e. The 7hbunP appointe d itse lf guardian of the future or Chi cago , and the to\\'cr symboli1ecl this role: "the colossal flying buuresses which-both literally and spiritually-are the supreme note of the tructurc seem to u to ullcr a message both of challenge a nd of guardianship." With the competition, McCormick and Pauerson allempted to bring "Culture" to the masses, that is, culture according to the Tribune's definition, They hoped to create a civic S)'mbol that would stand for the

Cathedral of Commerce appropriate to the values ofa modern American newspaper. It represented the newspaper's right to lead Chicago, and the nation, into the future. It was beautiful enough Lo be acknowledged the world over as a gift to Chicago, a city great in culture as well as commerce. And it tood as a full-scale advertisement announcing the high aspirations of the World's Greatest Newspaper.

For Further Reading The handiest reference on the Tribune Competition, Stanley Tigerman and Stuart E. Cohen, Chicago Tribune Tower Competition and Late Entries ( ew York: Rizzoli International Publications, lnc., 1980), includes a reprint of the original competition book and illustrates all the entries and "late entries." It was published after the Late Entry Competition in 1979.Joseph Patterson's papers are held by the Donnelley Library at Lake Forest College. See also Joseph Medill Patterson, A Little Brother of the Rich (Upper Saddle River, NJ: The Gregg Press, 1968). Because the Robert R. McCormick Papers are closed until an official biography is written, it is necessary to rely upon unrestricted coITespondence, his own published writings, and recollections of those who knew him. See also Joseph Gies, The Colonel of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979) and Frank Waldrop, McCormick of Chicago. An Unconventional Portrait of a Controversial Figure (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966). The Tribune Company Archives holds memoirs, coITespondence, photographs, brochures, and other materials dealing with the history of the newspaper. Copies of the Chicago Tribune are preserved on microfilm in the CHS Library.

In 1979 Chicago architects Stuart Cohen and Stanley Tigennan and gallery owner Rhona Hoffman invited arrhitecLr to submit "Late Entries lo the Chicago Tribune Competition." Humorous to poetic, the seventy submissions revealed ranging allitudes about the role of skyscrapers in American culture. Peter Pran designed a "study in classical and modernist allusions" (above).

entire community. The symbol they chose was one with elitist connotations, but ll'hich also stood for the rulership of the elite over a society in which all classes are unified. The Tribune Tower became "an ob ervation tower from which America can be inspected," providing a commanding view for the colonel and the c::iptain from their offices on the t\,'Cnty-fourth floo1: For the Tribune, the Gothic Tribune Tower, though linked with European tradition, was

Illustrations 4, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection; 6-7, Tribune Company Archives; 8, David Van Zanten and Tribune Company Archives; 9, Tribune Company Archives; 10 left and 11, from Tribune Tower Competition, Chicago Tribune, 1923, courtesy ofRizzoli International Publications, Inc.; 10 right, CHS Architectural Collection; 12, Tribune Company Archives; 13, reprinted from the February 1923 Pencil Points, copyright Progressive Architecture, Penton Publishing, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago; 14-19, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection; 20-21, Tribune Company Archives; 22, from The Trib,June 1924, Tribune Company Archives; 24, from Souvenir of Tribune Tower, Tribune Company Archives; 25, CHS Architectural Collection. 25

No Freaks, No Amazons, No Boyish Bobs by Susan M. Cahn

Worried that baseballs status as the national pastime would not survive World War II, Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley devised a new spectacle to insure that it did. The All-American Girls Baseball League entertained a war-weary public with its calculated combination offeminine charm and masculine athletic ability.

In 1943 Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley launched a bold new baseball enterprise. Fearful that major league baseball might collap c under wartime manpower shortages, he proposed a professional women's baseball league. The AllAmerican Girls Baseball League (AAGBL), as it came to be called, served a dual purpose for Wrigley. He promoted the league as a form of entertainment for a war-weary public in need of wholesome , outdoor recreation. At the same time, he used women's baseball as a temporary replacement for the men's game, keeping stadiums occupied and fan interest alive. The AAGBL celebrated women's strength and energy, but it also kindled anxieties about traditional gender arrangements in American society. Since the early twentieth century, critics of women sports enthusiasts had cast them in the negative im age of "mannish ath letes," an image that questioned their femininity and raised the specter of lesbianism. Sport was considered a male activity, the domain of traditional masculine virtues of aggressiveness, competition, physical prowess, and virili ty. Women athletes were seen as intruders into this male realm. Dorothy ''Mickey " Maguire shows her strength and skill at bat for the Muskegon Lassies.

Susan M. Cahn is a doctoral candidate in history andfeminist studies al the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Chicago History, Spring 1989 The AAGBL used the gender issue in sports to its advantage as an ingenious way to market its brand of baseball to the public. By demanding that its players combine "masculine" athletic skill with very feminine appearance, the AAGBL maintained a clear distinction between male and female roles while providing the fans with skillfully played and exciting baseball. The league thus avoided the mannish image that plagued other women's sports. League managers could assure audiences, amazed at seeing a woman play a "man's game," that the players were feminine and "normal" in every other respect. Although the AAGBL did not fundamentally challenge existing concepts of masculinity and femininity, it gave a group of gifted women athletes a unique opportunity to compete with the best players in the nation in a game they loved. The league opened in four midwestern cities: Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin; South Bend, Indiana; and Rockford, Illinois. After a slow start attendance climbed steadily, and Wrigley's experiment gained a foothold in the professional sports world. The AAGBL later expanded to include teams in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and

Like other teams in the AAGBL, the Racine Belles strove lo project a carefully groomed, allraclive, and very feminine image lo the public.

Muskegon, Michigan; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Peoria, Illinois, with short-lived attempts in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis; Battle Creek, Michigan; and Springfield, Illinois. It became much more than a wartime surrogate-spanning tl1e years 1943 to 1954-and at its peak operated in ten cities and drew nearly a million fans. As it became clear that the major league men's game would survive the war, Wrigley lost interest and sold his share of the AAGBL to Arthur Meyerhoff, his close associate and advertising agent. Meyerhoff created the Management Corp. to publicize and coordinate league teams, which typically were owned by businessmen from the sponsoring city. From 1944 through 1950, Meyerhoffs Chicago-based office managed the league with assistance from a board of directors and a league commissioner. In 1951 disgruntled team owners bought out Meyerhoff and decentralized the league's organization during its last four seasons. The AAGBL~s eventual collapse in 1954 should not obscure its remarkable accomplishments. For Lll'elve seasons the league played a fourmonth schedule of 120 games plus a championship series. Auendance during peak years ranged from 500,000 to one million as fans eagerly turned out lo root for local teams named the Daisies, Lassies, Peaches, Blue Sox, and Comets. The league recruited women from nearly e,·ery state and several Canadian provinces. Often championship athletes in several sports, players recei,·ed $40 to $85 per week in the league's early years and up to $125 per ll'eek in later years. They grabbed at the chance to pla) ball professionally, seeing it, as did Fon Wa)ne pla)erJean I la,·lish, "like a dream .. . to get paid for doing something you liked so well." For credibility and name recognition, tl1e AAGBL hired ex-major league baseball managers. Among them were Jimmie Foxx, Marty McManus, and Max Carey (who also served as commissioner for several years). Though constantly beset by financial problems, high manager turnover, and franchise failure, league teams that survived the initial trial period drew well and commanded tremendous loyalty from hometown fans. For instance, the Racine Belles attracted more spectators than any local male sports team had ever drawn. And when tl1e Rockford Peaches tl1reatened to go under in tl1e 1950s, fans raised tl1e money to keep tl1e team

No Freaks

Members of the All-American Girls Softball League-(hP forerunner of the A AC BL-play pepper in Wrigley Field during their first season in 1943.

anoat. Former Rockford and Kenosha player Mary Pratt remembered, "The £ans thought that we were the best thing that ever came clown the pike. They really looked up to us." No other women's team sport before or since created such a viable professional organization. £\·en tennis and golf, the most successful women's professional sports, were still primarily amateur in the l940s, without professional tours or associations. [n order to succeed, a women's professional sports enterprise had to overcome the cultural perception of sport as a masculine activi1y. Since the cle,·elopment of organized sport in late nineteenth-century America, men had dominated virtually all athletic events and associations, except for brief periods "hen women' tennis and swimming commanded a share of the limeligh1. College football, professional baseball , men's track and field, and boxing enjoyed large popular followings, while administrative bodies like the National Collegiate Athletic Association,

the Amateur Athletic Union, and the National and American baseball leagues were led by men with little interest in women's athletics. Americans aw sport as a male acti,·ity, and they associated athletics with masculine ideals of aggressiveness, competitivene. s, physical strength, and \'irility. Virtues for men, such traits raised the specter of "man,iishness" in women . Doctors, scientists, and exercise specialists cautioned that sport posed grave emotional and physical dangers to women, issuing ominous warnings about female hysteria and damaged maternal capacity. However, some women bra,·ed the criticism and enthusiastically engaged in sports-from the 1890s bicycle craze to gymnastics classes, swimming, track and field, basketball, and especially softball in the 1930s and 1940s. Advocales viewed sport as a step toward emancipation that granted them physical freedom and competitive experience denied under restrictive Victorian notions of femininity. 29

Chicago History, Spring 1989

Softball, invented in the early twentieth century, provided an altemative to baseball that cou/,d be played in an indoor or restricted spa.ce. This Chicago team won the Turner League championship for the /907-08 season.

By World War II, women athletes had established a solid institutional base in community recreation programs, industrial leagues, and intramural school programs. Although proponents had by this time settled on a philosophy of "modified athletics" for women , with special rules, unifonns, and chaperone systems in place to differentiate women's athletics from men's, critics continued to evoke the image of the "mannish athlete." Media portrayals frequently referred to successful athletes as ''Amazons" with masculine skills and body types. At the organizational level, efforts to curtail women's competitive sports and to eliminate female track and field events from the Olympic Games persisted through the 1950s. To overcome resistance to their\'enture, Philip Wrigley and Arthur Meyerhoff did not try to reduce the tension between sport and femininity but instead decided to accentuate it. Meyerhoff especially sought to promote women's baseball by capitalizing on the contrast between "masculine" baseball skill and feminine appearance, describing the league as a "clean spirited, colorful sports show" built upon "the dramatic impact of seeing baseball, traditionally a men's game, played by feminine type girls with masculine skill." 1eyerhoff speculated that the novelty of women's baseball would attract first-time customers intrigued by the "amazing spectacle of beskirted girls throwing, catching, hitting and running like men ...." Unlike barnstorming

teams that occasionally featured women players competing against men, the AAGBL needed to sustain interest after the initial effect wore off. Meyerhoff again linked success to the combination of feminine charm and masculine acti\Âˇity. He be lieved that "the sight of girls playing baseball remains a constant soLu-ce of amazement and wonder to most fans," and "the fact that the AllAmerican players are ' nice girls"' would give women's baseball an edge over men's in winning fan interest and sympathy. The management did not consider athletic ability within the boundaries of femininity; they described baseba ll as a masculine activit)' and the girls' league as a spectacle. The principal logi c behind the league was to find women who played ball "like men," not "like girls," and who looked like "nice girls," not like men. Wh) did Wrigley, Meyerhoff, and the team owners insist on this distinction? The answer lies in the broader history of sport as a male arena and, specifically, in the tarnished image of women's sofiball. Invented in the early 1900s as a derivative of baseball for indoor play or in restricted outdoor space, softball came into its own as a game in the 1930s. The Amateur Softball Association (ASA) was organized in 1934, and after only one year 950,000 men, women, and children participated in ASA-sanctioned leagues. New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration poured money and workers into facility construction projects and community recreation programs. The depression-era boom caused the Christian Science ,\Jonitor to note that softball was fast "beco ming a national recreation for the masses.â&#x20AC;˘Âˇ When th e war came, softball's popularity continued LO soar so th at by the mid-19-Hls the New )'ark Times estimated the sport had grown LO include nine million players, 600,000 teams, and 150 million spectators in the United States. Though popular nationwide , softball's strongest roots lay in the Midwest. Chicagoans showed a special zeal for the sport. The city hosted several of the first ASA nationa l tournaments and catered to all ages and abilities through park, Yl\lCA, church, business , industrial , and athletic association leagues. Girls and women eagerly joined the throng. Cnlike baseball, softball had no masculine stigma at first. If anything, the use of a softer ball, Lhe smaller field dimensions, and early names like "kitten ball" and "mush ball" cast softball in a

No Freaks slighlly feminine light as a game appropriate for women, youngsters, and men not rugged enough to excel in baseball. On the local level, any criticism of female athletes usually paled next to the popular support given Lo teams by neighbo1-s, family members, friends, and co-workers. Softball thrived in rural areas and urban working-class neighborhoods. In both settings, notions of femininity were expansive and flexible enough to encompass the broad range of women's physically demanding domestic work and wage labor. Unlike middleclass culture, rural and working-class cultures had traditionally defined womanhood more in terms of family and community roles than prescribed feminine attributes and activities. Such

Sportswriters of the /940s viewed women softball plaJers like Frieda Savona with suspicion, ridiculing their lack of ladylike manners on the field and their masculine appearance.

flexible definitions allowed for 1he "outdoor girl" or "tomboy" with an avid interest in softball. ln addition, by organizing leagues through neighborhood parks, churches, service organizations, and businesses, supporters of softball built upon existing community institutions. During the depression and wartime eras, when money, gas, and leisure hours were in short supply, people flocked to their local playing field for an inexpensive evening's entertainment. When women's teams met success, winning in their leagues and advancing to city, state, regional, and national competitions, they continued to excite loyalty and enthusiasm among hometown fans who were more concerned about players' batting averages than femininity quotients. However, by the late 1930s, good women's teams began to attract attention as much for their "masculine appearance" as for their superior ability. Within a decade women's skill levels had increased dramatically with the best teams often defeating men's teams in fund raisers and exhibition games. Skilled women players demonstrated speed, powe1~ and competitive zest previously associated only with male athletes. In addition, as women developed physically through training, the size , weight, and musculature of some players evoked negative images of "manni h athletes." During the depression these stereotypes were fueled by cultural anxieties about female intrusion into male realms. High male unemp loyment and the resulting family disruptions caused many Americans to fear that working women were supplanting men in jobs and in the role of family provider. Media accounts of women's softball took a more critical approach by 1940, labeling softball a masculine sport and eyeing skilled women players with suspicion. In their book Softball.' So What, Lowell Thomas and Ted Shane took an apparenlly positive view, applauding the women's game as an activity that didn't "bunch muscles, give girls a weightlifter's figure, develop varsityclub leg, the usual penalty of fiendish exercise .... " Yet the authors also observed that women failed to exhibit ladylike manners on the field and resisted "anything effeminate" in the rules, letting out "such a holler as could be heard from Sappho to Amazonia" when men tried to modify the rules for women. In this case, the authors defended the sport as compatible with 31

No Freaks fe mininity. Ye t at th e sa me tim e th ey introdu ced a n e le me nt o f ridi cul e by re ferring to ge ne ra l prohibiti o ns aga in st wo me n athl e tes a nd intim ating a n assoc iati o n be twee n so ftba ll a nd les bi an isrn th ro ugh a llusio ns to Sap p ho a nd Amazo ns. Robe rt Yo d e r ba re ly co nta in ed his sco rn in a 1942 Saturday Evening Post feature o n wo m e n's so fi.b a ll , whi ch d escribed Ol ympi a a nd Fri ed a Savo na, sta r pl aye rs o n th e na tion a l cha mpi o nship team , th e New Orl ea ns J ax. "Ol ympi a runs like a ma n, slid es like a ma n a nd catches like a ma n ," but "thou gh built like a foo tba ll ha lfback, loo ks fra il co m pa re d to Mi ss Fri e d a." Revea ling a se nse o f threa te ne d m a nh oo d , he co ntras te d wo me n pl aye rs wh o "m ay occas io na ll y p lay like me n , a nd occas io na ll y eve n loo k like m e n" with "th e fra il est crea ture o n th e fi e ld [w ho] is freq u e ntl y th a t und eve lo pe d shrimp , th e m a le umpire ." W1-igley se nse d th a t to ma ke wo m e n's base ba ll attractive to a mass a udi e nce beyond th e ne ighborhood a p pea l o f so ftba ll , he wou ld have to ove rco m e such negative po rtraya ls a nd circumve nt cha rges th a t, as a "m a le spo rt," base ba ll wo uld masc ulini ze \,Âˇo me n. H e d ev ised a stra tegy th a t serve d as th e guidin g p r in c ipl e o f th e AAG BL lo ng afte r his own in vo lve m e nt e nd ed. By in sistin g th at th e wo m e n pl ay base ba ll , no t so ftb a ll , Wri g ley h oped to susta in inte rest in base ba ll as a spectato r spo rt. And by d e m a nding th a t pl aye rs co m bin e masc ulin e skill with fe minin e a ttrac ti ve ness, he ke pt th e idea l o f fe minin e wo ma nh ood co nsta ntl y befo re th e publi c eye . [n this way th e league wo uld try to establish itse lf as a cut above wo m e n's so ftba ll , avo id ing its m an nish im age a nd re puta ti o n for ro ugh er, to ug he r pl aye rs with less a ud ie nce appea l. In 19Âˇ~4 th e fo unding o f th e Na ti o na l G irls Base ba ll League (NG BL) in C hi cago cha ll e nged th e AAGBCs pree min e nce a nd und e rmin ed it s uniqu e sta tus as th e o nl y profess io na l base ba ll leagu e fo r wo me n . Th e NG BL initi a ll y consisted o f fo ur se mip ro tea m s th a t h a d d om in ate d wo m e n's so ftb all in th e C hi cago area. An cho re d b)' m a instays like th e Parichy Bl oo m e r Gi rl s, th e Mu sic i\l a icls, th e Rc,c ko la C hi cks, a nd the Ma tch Corp. Qu ee ns, th e league ex pa nded to ix teams Like the AAG BL, the Amateur Softball Association projected the idea that women were keeping the sport alive while men were away fighting the war.

Geneva Nieukirk, pitcher for the Rockola team, 1946. The National Girls Baseball League, the AAGBL's rival, was formed from f m r semipro Chicago softball teams and retained softball 's underhand pitch, shorter base paths, and traditional unifom , of shorts or knickers.

a nd a ttracted 500,000 a nnu a l specta to rs by th e la te 1940s. Like th e AAGBL, it fad ed o ut in th e earl y 1950s, but in th e m ea ntim e th e NGBL acte d as a co nsta nt th o rn in th e sid e o f its ri va l. Compe titi o n be twee n th e m for publi city and for playe rs led to sal a ry wa rs, ta le nt raiding, a nd a n eve ntua l law. uit. Th e NGBL re m a in e d close ly ti ed to softba ll , kee pin g th e und e rh a nd pitch and shorte r base path o f so ftba ll as we ll as th e traditi o na l so ftb a ll uni fo rm s of sho rts o r kni ckers. It placed no spec ia l e mph as is o n fe mininity, th o ugh it did no t re fra in fro m using se xua l appea ls in ad ve rtisin g. Th e existe n ce ofa rival d ee pe ne d the AAGBL's commitment to its unique bra nd of fe minine base ball. Th e league had used the underhand pitch in 1943 but quickl y legalized a side-arm delivery a nd eve ntually switched completel y to ove rh a nd pitching. Meyerhoff's Management Corp. sought a competitive advantage by continuing to stress femininity and a unique style of ball to contras t with the rough , m asculine image of so ftba ll. A bea u ty consultant hired for spring tra ining in 1944 captured th e spirit when she substituted th e feminine nickname "marygirl " for th e more m asculine "tomboy" moniker to 33

Chicago History, Spring 1989

The pastel skirted unifonns worn by these Racine Belles were among the AAGBL's primary trademarks offemininity.

describe "the type of young womanhood" desired by the AAGBL. By associating masculinity with athletic skill and femininity with appearance, the AAGBL maintained a clear sense ofappropriate diYisions between male and female, even as it ga,·e women an unprecedented opportunity to enter a male sports preserve. The AACBL adhered to this principle both in the concrete daily operations of the league and in the ideology of women's sport it promoted. The league's dress and conduct codes, its public relations campaigns, and its playing rules all reflect this overarching philosophy. In the AAGBL handbook, Meyerhoffs Management Corp. spelled out the logic behind the accentuated contrast of feminine charm with masculine athletic ability. The section called "Femininity with Skill" instruCLed 1·ecruiters to weigh both ability and femininity in prospective players because it was "more dramatic to see a

feminine-type girl throw, run and bat than to sec a man or boy or masculine-type girl do the same things. The more feminine lhe appearance of lhe performer, the more dramatic lhe perfonnance:· The guide further explained that the league's rules must go hand in hand with players' own efforts to project the desired image. The manual continued: For the benefit of self and game every playc1· dc,·otes himself" to cultivation of both skill and femininity. ~lanagement reinforces thi, \tandard faithfullr. It is for the purpose of keeping constant!) before the spectator the feminine elements of the slHH, that the AllAmerican girls are uniformed in tennis-type skirts. Converse I), boyish bobs and other imitations of masculine St)'le and habit are taboo. ~lasculine appea1·ance or mannerisms produce an impre. sion either of a masculine girl or an effeminate bo)', both effects prejudicial to the dramatic contrast of feminine aspect and masculine skill.

No Freaks

T h e ca re full y crafted impression of femininity includ ed a sexua l e lement. AAGBL officials abso lute ly forbade bawdiness o r sexua l antics reminiscent of barnstorming teams, often named "Bloomer Girls," from an earlier era. Consistent with its "nice girl " im age, the league boasted of the All-American G irl s' "high moral tone," further safeguarded by the watchful eye of the chaperone . Neverthe less, Meyerhoff understood that his id ea l feminine ball player would attract customers with her sex appeal as well as he r slu ggin g average. By insisting on short sk irts, makeup, and physical attractiveness, he attempted lo cap ita lize on an id ea l of wholesome, feminine sexual ity. A description of th e league in the m~jor league baseball Blue Book captured the essence of the ploy, exp la ining on the one hand that The players did not reflect sex-consciousness. On the other hand, if by "sex" is mean t the normal appeal of the feminine mode and au itudc , then most certain ly sex was an important source of interest and a legitimate clement of the league's success. Tt) ensure that players did in fact embody the desired "feminine mode and attitude," the league's first few spring training sessions featured not on ly tryouts and preseason cond iti on in g but an evening charm sc hoo l as well. Led one ye,;1r by beauticians from the Helena Rubenstein sa lon and anot her year by Chicago Tribune beauty ed itor Eleanor ~!angle , the clini c coached players on makeup , posture, fashion, table manners, and "graceful socia l deportment al large.'· Guidel in es on personal appearance accompanied the beauty tips. ;\lanagemenL ordered players to keep the ir hair shou ld er length or longer, LO wear makeup and nail polish, and never to appear in public wearing shorts, slacks, or jeans. The league dropped the charm school after its value as a public relations stunt ebbed . However, management's stress on feminine dress and manner never wavered . ln fact, as the league's popularity declined after 1948, written dress codes took on a shri ll , urgent tone . A 1950 directive from the main office announced: "This league has onl} two things to se ll to the public, basebal l and fcmininit)·." Stating that most players needed no prodding to appear feminine, the memo warned "o th et-s who will feel the stin g of a shortened pay check if they don't comp ly.... "

After buying out Meyerhoff in 1951, team owners adopted a new constitution that further elaborated dress gu id e lines, stating: "Always appear in feminine attire. This precludes the use of any wearing attire of masculine nature. MASCULI E HAIR STYLING? SHOES? COATS? SHIRTS? SOCKS, T-SHIRTS ARE BARRED AT ALL TIMES." The league introdu ced severa l other measures to create th e desired effect. The management rejected players it perceived as too masculine. Even after making a team, a player might be fined or released if she violated league rules. Infractions in clud ed not only neglecting dress and hair requirements but "moral lapses·' ranging from a bad attitude to negotiating with the NGBL to obvious lesb ian ism. The AAGBL a lso had a n unwritten policy aga in st hiring minority women, a lthough it did emp loy severa l Cuban players. Not until 1951 did the league openly discuss hirin g black women , eventually deciding aga inst the id ea "unl ess th ey

This 1944 advertisement showing softball players relaxing after a hard game captures the calculated blend of feminine charm and masculine ath'-etic ability -promoters sought for the AAGBL.

Chicago History, Spring 1989

AACBL team chaperones like Dollie Green of the Rockford Peaches (administering first aid lo Peaches pitcher Lois Flon-eich) served as mediators, advisers, nurses, and player advocates as well as disciplinarians who enforced the strict player conduct code.

would show promise of exceptional ability." This policy reflects the pervasive racism in American society at large and in sport during the 1940s and 1950s. But it can also be understood in relation to the league's special emphasi on femininity, an image rooted in white middle-class beliefs about beauty, body type, and female nature. This feminine ideal tended to exclude or deprecate black women, making black athletes inherently less likely to meet league standards. In addition to guidelines on dress and recruiting, the league instituted a player conduct code that forbade most public drinking and smoking, required players to obtain prior approval for social engagements and living arrangements, and imposed an evening curfew. To enforce the rules, each team hired a chaperone responsible for reporting violations to the management. Chaperones were typically, but not always, older than the players. Some had no athletic background and were hired through personal connections to local management. Others, like Rockford chaperone Dottie Green, were former players who stepped into chaperone positions after their playing careers ended. Despite their 36

disciplinary role, chaperones often forged strong alliances with players , serving as mediators, advisers, and even as player advocates when conflicts arose with management. With these regulations, the league aimed to surround women's baseball "with such safeguards as to warrant public confidence in its integrity and method." Public relations wizard Meyerhoff developed several promotional schemes. He varied spring training sites annually in order to increase media and audience exposure. In later years, the league established two traveling teams of young players not yet skilled enough for regular league play. The idea grew out ofa failed expansion attempt in 1948. To thwart the NGBI.:s own expansion plans, the AAGBL established a Chicago team to occupy a stadium the GBL had hoped to use. The team, the Colleens, failed immediately as did its expansion twin the Springfield Sallies. To stave o!T embarrassment and further financial loss, the league used the team names and uniforms to form two travelingsquads. The summer touring teams exhibited the AAGBL brand of ball to enthusiastic crowds in midwestern, northeastern, and southern states, functioning at the same time as a minor league program to hone the skills of potential league players. Other publicity efforts aimed at gaining national media attention and at establishing good community relations in league cities. A film crew from Movietone News followed the league to its 19clc7 spring training in Havana, Cuba, to shoot a preseason game before a crowd of25,000. Later released as a newsreel called "Diamond Gals," it exposed millions ofmo\"iegoers in theaters around the country to the spectacle of AllAmerican Girls Baseball. Articles in national magazines like Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, and Holiday reported on the league's novel brand of baseball and growing popularity. Meyerhofrs office carefully 01-chestrated contacts with the media , providing glossy photos of the league's most beautiful players, issuing copies of the league's dress and conduct codes, and emphasizing the difference between baseball and softball. To stress the femininity of the league and quickly silence any suggestions of masculinity or lesbianism, AAGBL officials stressed Lo the media that league rules allowed "no freaks or Amazons." As proof, it proudly drew attention to the married

No Freaks players and mothers in the league, though clue to the young age of most players this group never comprised more than a tiny fraction of the AAGRL players. While national feature stories highlighted the sex appeal and sensational quality of the league, local promotions stressed the team's contributions to community life and the players' "girl next door" image. Meyerhoffs Management Corp. was a profit-making enterprise, but individual teams incorporated as nonprofit organizations and returned a portion of their proceeds to the community by supporting local recreation programs and facility maintenance. Ownership by local businesses provided one source of civic backing, while teams gained additional support from local chapters of the Elks, the woman's club, and similar service organizations. Players made personal contact with community members by rooming with local families, giving clinics, attending banquets, and making public appearances at community events. AAGBL teams fared best in medium-sized cities like Rockford and Fon Warne , where such personal contacts could be cultivated. Cnlike the larger cities of Chicago, :vlih,Âˇ,wkee, and Minneapolis where franchises failed, these small industrial centers combined a keen interest in baseball with 1he absence of other professional.sports venll1res to compete for the limi1ed market. Daily newspapers in league towns provided excellent regular coverage, and local radio stations broadcast games in some league cities. In contrast to the national media, the local press rarely resorted to the femininity angle , employing it onl) in feature articles and preseason publicity spots. Once the season began, straightfon\'ard reporting prevailed ,,Âˇithout gendered headlines such as "Pretty Blonde Wins Again" or "Lady Blue Sox." It is not clear whether the femininity concept advocated by the league was instrumental in a team's success or failure in a particular city. Many factors contributed to a team's fortunes, including financial backing, competition for the entertainment dollar, team strength, and management ability. While spectators may have responded positively to the feminine style and wholesome values projected by the league , skilled play, intense competition, and intercity rivalries also won the enthusiastic support of baseball fans.

MEMBERS

ALL AMERICAN GIRLS BASEBALL LEAGUE

l:ach year the AACBL played a rigorous JouHnonth schedule of 120 games and a cham/1ionship series in towns around the Midwesl.

The continued popularity of semi pro and amateur softball teams suggests at least that alternative approaches, less concerned with expressions of femininity, could succeed alongside the AAGBL's intense focus on female image. In Peoria, for example, for several seasons the AAGBL Redwings struggled to stay afloat while the powerhouse women's softball team, the Peoria Dieselettes, remained a popular favorite. And in Chicago, the NGBL offered a legitimate alternative to the Wrigley-Meyerhoff brand of baseball, though never reaching as wide an audience as the AAGBL. Nevertheless, league officials remained firmly convinced that the contrast between feminine appearance and masculine skill formed the core of the league's appeal. While promotional efforts and dress and conduct codes guaranteed the feminine side of the equation, the impression of "masculine skill" rested on maintaining the distinction between baseball and softball. Management constantly adjusted the rules to more closely conform to the rules of men's baseball. Over the years the league increased the length between bases from 65 to 85 feet, shrunk the ball size, and introduced overhand pitching. This strategy came back to haunt the AAGBL. The league wanted to highlight the fact that the women could play a man's game-baseball-at

Chicago History, Spring 1989 the same time denying any resemblance between the All-American Girl and the "pants-wearing, tough-talking female softballer." Eventually this distinction caused the AAGBL to lose contact with its greatest source of talent, semipro and amateur softball players. After the early years the league fought a constant battle to find quality pitching and young talent. Many of the best softball pitchers were unable or even unwilling to make the transition to pitching overhand. Ironically, the very popularity of organized sport, with youth softball and baseball programs springing up everywhere, may have created unforeseen problems. Organized leagues, especially Little League baseball, tended toward strict gender segregation. By the 1950s fewer girls grew up playing neighborhood baseball on sandlot and playground teams. To compensate, the league hatched several player development schemes: summer and winter baseball schools, summer traveling teams, regional tryouts, and junior

AAGBL teams in league cities. They did not produce the hoped-for results, causing league commissioner Fred Leo to lament, "We have too many old timers." Seeing rookies as "our salvation ," the league introduced a rookie rule requiring each team to plar at least one first-year player in order to develop recruits who otherwise could nol break into the lineup. Beyond the pitching shortage, the league faced a general problem competing for talent with the NGBL and top amateur softball teams. Though the AAGBL forbade jumping leagues, a few players did cross back and forth. Bidding wars for star players raised salaries and added lo the bitterness between the two leagues. When league finances deteriorated in the 1950s, personnel shonages forced the lc:ague into a onetime "amne ty" offer to lure former players back to the MCBL. Other women used the th real ofjumping leagues lo gain le,Âˇerage in salary and trade negotiations , prompting the owner of the South Bend

The Phil,adelphia Ath/,etics' 1,egendary manager Connie Mack (center) joins the Kenosha Comets in the dugout during a home game.

No Freaks Blu e Sox to co mpl a in , "Th ese girls have no idea o f loyalty. . . . T h ey are su re a b un ch o f to ug h acto rs a nd will go uge yo u rega rd less . . . . " Th e ta le nt sh o rtage m ay expl a in th e h e ighte ned co nce rn over dress a nd fe minin e im age ex pressed in leagu e co mmuni catio ns during its las t yea rs. Th e leagu e bega n signing very yo ung pl aye rs of fi ftee n a nd sixtee n as we ll as co urting softba ll ve te ra ns like th e Savo na siste rs, no te d in the me di a for both th e ir "m a nni sh " a ppeara nce a nd physica l prowess. Fo rced to re lax its standards o f age a nd fe minini ty in recrui tme nt, m a nageme nt may have ste pped up e ffo rts to co ntro l p laye r be havio r a nd mo nito r ap pea ra nce, ho ping to reass ure th e pa re nts o f you ng recruits a nd to preserve th e league's care full y cultivated fem inin e im age. Wo m e n j oin e d th e AAG BL fro m a ll ove r th e Unite d States a nd Ca nad a, so me heav il y recruite d , oth e rs trave ling mil es o n th e slim h o pe o f ge tting a tryo ut. T h e yo un g wo me n sha red a comm o n childh ood pass io n fo r spo rts a nd a pa rti cul a r exce ll e nce a t so ft ba ll o r baseba ll. Interv iews with fo rm e r AAG BL me mbers sugges t th at iss ues o ffem ininity ra re ly co nce rn e d pl aye rs, who ove n-vh e lmingly viewe d th e leagu e as a fa ntasti c o ppo rtunity to d o so m e thing th ey rea ll y loved - pl ay base ba ll. Ye t loo kin g bac k, o pini on va ri es a bo ut the va lu e of dres cod es, rul es o f co ndu ct, and th e AAGBL's overarching fe mininity prin cipl e. So me pl aye rs fo und th e league's co nce rn with fe mininity ridi cul o us, whil e o th e rs be li eved it he lped th e league a nd improve d th e image o f wo me n a thl e tes. Pragma ti c rath e r th a n id eo logica l co nsid erati o ns sha pe d p layers' views o n the paste l skirted uni for ms. In a 1985 Sports Illustrated inte rvi ew, Shirl ey J a meso n , o n e o f th e fir st pl aye rs eve r sig n e d , reca ll e d h e r fee lin gs as "ambiva le nt," no ting that, "They we re very feminin e, a nd yo u could d o th e j o b-most of the time." But th ey offered littl e leg protectio n wh e n sliding; thus J am eson recalls, "I spe nt most of the seaso n with strawberries on bo th legs." Some pl ayers be lieved tha t if th e uni fo rms create d a good publi c impressio n , co ntributing to the league's surviva l, th ey be ne fite d th e pl aye rs rega rdl ess of p e rso n a l tas te. Still o th e rs, like Ka la mazoo playe r Nancy Mudge Cato, loved the sharp loo k o f th e uniform and spo ke o f it with prid e. "I loved that unifo rm ... . Wh e n I'd see girls in th e softba ll uniform s, j oc ks, running

around , I didn't like it nearl y as mu ch . l was rea ll y th a nkful for th e skirt. I th o ug ht th ey we re just cha rming." Pl ayers disp layed a simil a r ra nge o f o pinio n a bo u t dress an d co ndu ct cod es. Na ncy Mudge Cato a nd J ea n H av li sh , who pl ayed in th e 1950s a nd d escribed th e mse lves as mo re inn oce nt th a n m ost, fo und th e rul es agreeabl e. Pe rso na ll y co mfo rta bl e with th e fe minin e style culti vated hy th e leagu e, th ey a lso recogni zed th at beca use o f th e di scre dite d im age o f wo me n athl e tes, "Yo u had to be ca re ful so yo u wo uldn't g ive so m eo n e a bad impress io n , so yo u wo uldn't hurt th e gate .... Yo u had to be . .. a bove re proac h in everything so yo u wo uldn't hurt th e league." O th e r c ha fed und e r th e regul a ti o ns but co nfo rm ed o ut o f a calcul ated es tim a ti o n o f th e risks. Pe ppe r Pa ire expl a in ed to Sports Illustrated re po rte r J ay Fe ldm a n, "Yo u have to unde rsta nd th a t we'd ra th e r pl ay ba ll th a n eat, a nd wh e re e lse co uld we go a nd ge t pa id $ 100 a wee k to pl ay ba ll ? So, if so me o f th e g irl s liked to wea r th e ir ha ir a littl e bit sh o rt, o r like d to run a round in j eans, th e}' be nt with th e rul es ." Yet Pa ire a lso re me mbered th a t "th e re we re a fe w littl e ways o f getting aro und th e rul es, as lo ng as yo u we re di scree t a nd didn't fl a unt it." And Faye Da nce r, o ne o f th e leagu e's m o re fl a mboya nt pl aye rs, rega le d She ld o n Sunn ess o f Z M agazine with he r o wn a pp roac h to th e rul es. "I a lways res pec ted th e rul es. I broke th e m a ll, but I res pec ted th e m." Shirl ey Jameson admitted that the charm training served a purpose but also found that the lesso ns often conflicted with th e more important matter at hand-pl aying baseball. The charm teach ers "didn't seem to be tuned in to what we had to d o . Some of it was appropos [sic], but a lot of it you just couldn't use playing baseball." Dottie Schroe der saw charm training as "a j o ke, it was a promotio nal deal," while Irene Hickson rankled at th e implied criticism of women ball players. Describing charm school as "sickening," she told historian Sharon Roepke , "It was silly, it reall y was . But eve r ybod y felt there was something wrong with you because you could play ball. You were m asculine a nd all that. .. . " Pl aye rs like Hi ckson had grown up in co mmuniti es wh e re baseba ll , bas ke tba ll , a nd eve n fistfigh ting a nd foo tba ll were un o rth od o x but still acce pta bl e acti viti es fo r girl s. Phys ica l stre ngth , co mpe titive ness, a nd pe rson a l to ug hness were 39

Chicago History, Spring 1989 qualities admired in women and men alike. Moreover, in many working-class and rural areas, \\'Omen's clothing styles were not as restrictive as dominant modes of fashion . 1<.i AAGBL players from such backgrounds, the league's dress code and concept of femininity may have appeared strange, iITelevanl, or even offensive. Nevertheless, the practical tips on etiqueuc and social presentation could provide helpful instruction for players unfamiliar with formal dining or public speaking. And for players who wanted more than anything else to play ball, the league's philosophy made pragmatic sense. New Englanders ,\[ary Prall and Dottie Green admitted that they never questioned the rules al the time because "we were a little square, we were Puritans." But in hindsight, they still found the league's logic convincing, echoing management's reasoning that if fans "want to go out and sec a bunch of tomboys play, they can go oul to the park for nothing, but they ha\'e to pay 90 cents to get in here so they want lo see girls with finesse.'' Despite this range of opinion, former players seem not to ha\'e experienced spon as a masculine endeavor or lo ha\'e personally felt a tension between sport and female identity. They regarded competitiveness, a love ofspon, and the constant quest for improvement as integral aspects of their personalities, neither feminine nor masculine. Players did not express any sense of themselves as less womanly than nonathletes, even though they were aware that to some , baseball ll'as a masculine game requiring masculine qualities. Their 10\·e of sport pushed questions of femininity imo the background. Sport's masculine connotation presented problems only when it provoked negative responses from others or posed batTiers to playing opportunities. In contrast to the Wrigley-Meyerhoff concept of the AAGBL as a unique blend of masculinity and femininity, players did not see the league as a dramatic novelty of gender contrast. Rath et~ they found drama in the thrill of competition and no\'elty in the rare opportunity to work, travel , and meet people while pur uing their passion for baseball . While the All-American Girls played tirelessly and enthusiastically O\'er the long summer months, the management waged a constalll battle against financial woes and franchise collapse. By the early 1950s even the most solid teams were

in debt. Mainstays like Racine and South Bend withdrew from the league, which shrunk to five teams in 1954. By the end of the season league directors conceded that they could not maintain even this skeleton structure. The board of directors cancelled the 1955 season, promising to reorganize the league in the future. Many factors contributed to the AAGBL's decline. As urbanites joined the postwar suburban exodus and television took the entertainment world by storm, home recreation became the order of the clay. Major spectator sports like football and baseball continued lo draw large audiences, but attendance su!Tered at all other le\'els. Both local and national media expanded their C0\'erage of major sports, nurturing a national sports culture that gradually supplanted small-tm,·n boosterism and local loyalties. Softball remained a popular sport, especially in the city and industrial leagues. Howeve1~ as returning veterans replaced women in t.he work force , industrial sports as well as jobs once again became the province of men. Girls' and women's leagues continued to operate but as ,·ery minor programs. r\nd while topnotch amateur and semipro women's softball teams ne\'er ceased pro\'iding skilled athletes a place to de\'clop and compete, in most communities Lillie League baseball, industrial softball, ancl minor league men's baseball commanded an m ·erwhclming share of funds, facilities, and civic backing. Finally, the novel combination of "feminine attraction" and "masculine athletics" clashed with the conservative culture of the 1950s. In contrast to the giddy sense of workplace competence and freedom women experienced in the war years, the 1950s witnessed a swift turnabout that propelled women back into domesticity. The emphasis on home, family, and marriage was rooted in a return to older, restrictive definitions offemininity. Virulent homophobia-the fear and hatred of gays and lesbians-accompanied the change in gender roles. An upsurge of meclia imerest in sexual crime and "perversion" intensified public hostility toward homosexuality. Police raids on gay bars, militaq• purges, and the firing of homosexual go\'ernment employee under Cold War "security" policies added to the homophobic atmosphere of the 1950s. Neither of these trends boded well for the AAGBL. With baseball firmly re-established as the national (men's) pastime

No Freaks and femininity once again defined in terms of domestic life, the league's innovative effort to combine spon and femininity and its affirmation of female athletic ability were at odds with the dominant culture. Moreover, in an era of political, legal , and media attacks on homosex uals, the association of women's sport with mannishness or lesbianism jeopardized any attempt Lo market women's baseball as mass entertainment. The legacy of the AAGBL lies less in its success or failure than in its fascinating approach Lo women's sports. The AAGBL management chose to promote the league by accentuating the tension between masculine sport and feminine charm. By continuing to sec athletic ability as masculine skill rather than incorporating athleticism within the range of fe minine qualities, ~he league's ideology posed no challenge Lo the fundamental precepts of gender in American society. In its concern with preserving the distinction between softball and baseball, the AAGBL disparaged women's soft.ball as unfeminine. Yet it ultimately preserved baseball as a male realm by promoting "feminine baseball" as a spectacle.

Attempting to present an image of femininity consistent with popular and marketable ideals, the AAGBL nevertheless played a part in undermining those ideals. The league'. philosophy highlighted the contrast between masculine sport and feminine appearance. But the actual experience of playing and viewing AAGBL basebal I challenged the idea that athletic . kill belonged in the province of men. The league provided women a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop their skills and to pursue their passion for sport aided by financial backing, quality coaching, and appreciative fans. The players returned the favor. They offered eager crowds the chance to view highly skilled competitive baseball played by women. Whether "tomboys" or "marygirls," the All-American Girls' aggressive, superior play challenged social conventions, defied athletic tradition, and offered the public an exciting and expanded sense of women's capabilities.

For Further Reading Pennsylvania State University Libraries holds microfilm records of the All-American Girls Baseball League; these include records of individual teams as well as AAGBL handbooks, minutes of league board meetings, correspondence of the management, and related miscellaneous documents and publications. The Chicago Tribune profiled the AAGBL for a players' reunion in ajuly 12, 1982, article, "The Girls of Summer:' For a more general treatment of women's sport history and its association with masculinity, see Helen Lenskyj , Out of Bounds: Women, Sport, and Sexuality (Toronto: The Women's Press, 1986) and Reet Howell, ed., Her Story in Sport (West Point, NY: Leisure Press, 1982).

Illustrations

During the postwar years baseball was re-established as a mens game, and, as this advertisement shows, women retreated into traditional domestic roles emphasizing home, family, and maniage.

26-27, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, NY; 28, CHS Library; 29, ÂŠ Copyright, Chicago Tribune Company, all rights reserved, used with permission; 30, CHS, ICHi-21011; 31, from Official National Girls Baseball League Magazine, May-June l952, CHS Library; 32, CHS Library; 33, CHS, ICHi-2l008; 34, Racine County Historical Society and Museum, Inc.; 35, from 1944 Amateur Softball Association Official Softball Rules, CHS Library; 36, ational Baseball Librnry, Cooperstown, NY; 37, Muskegon County Museum; 38, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, NY; 41, from House Beautiful, August 1948, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. 41

Labor's Last Stand by Toni Gil pin

Unwilling to accept International H arvester'.5 formula for harmonious labor relations, workers at the company '.5 McCormick and Tractor works joined the Farm Equipment Workers, a combative and particularly radical labor organization. A strike staged in August of 1952 brought the struggle between the company and the union to a final showdown.

The area around Blue Island and Western avenues doesn't look much like a battleground. It is now a quiet neighborhood largel y made up of abandoned or struggling factories, small brick two-flats, and family-run Italian restaurants. Once, however, International Harvester's McCormick and Tractor works stood there, and in the early 1940s the thousands who labored in these factories became members of the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), an organization known for its aggressive, confrontational style of unionism. By 1952 managers at International Harvester determined to end their relations with the FE; the union had become too bothersome and too costly to be tolerated much longer. The FE's leaders, the company believed, were political radicals who did not represent the real interests or beliefs of their members. The strike that began in late August of 1952 marked the final showdown between tl1e company and the union, and it was a struggle notable even in the annals of Chicago's turbulent labor history. On the streets surrounding the plants, picket line melees and arrests occurred daily, and the appearance of a congressional investigating committee and the violent death of a strikebreaker drew further press coverage and Âˇ public Toni Gilpin is a doctoral candidate in history at Yale University.

Picket line skirmish, October 3, 195 2.

RIIVIINCIII I . t A ,, r or 1ngmen, o rms ... W k You IDUleN MDI ou, their bloodhou1ld• - th• polloe - ; they killed m of your brothen al KoOormioka t.hla af,trAoon. Tiley ldl'ed th• poor wretch•, beoaUN they, Uk• you, had the oourase lo dlaobe1' the • upnm• wlll of your bONN. They killed thea. beoaUN they daNd au for the llhortelliD of th• houn of toll. TIiey kioled them lo • how J'Oll, •· F,e•• American < ~itlzen•~•. lbal you mu .. t be Ndded uul 0i>DleDded with whatever you boNe• oondnoend to allow you, or you will set killed I You have for yean endured the mo• t abject humWaUou; you have for )'W,r • 11116"4 UDJDeuunb&a totqu1'1• ; you have worked younelfto death; you ha·n endued the pans• ofwanl and hunpr; you O.btldren you have Norlficed to the factory-lorda 1D. • hon: You have been miNrable and obedtenl alave all thaN year•: Why!' To • attat., the iD.Ntiable areed, to flll the coffen of your luy lt;ieviD.a ma • terl' When you au them now lo leuen your burden, he • end• bloodhound• out to • hoot you, kin you ! If you ar , men, tfyou are the • on • ofyouraran.4 aire• , who have llhed their bl004l to fl-.. you, then you will ri• e i ·, your mtsht, HerculN, and dNtroy the hideou• mouter that to de• troyyou . To arma we call you, to ,rm• !

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Labor'.s Last Stand

attention to the walkout. At the end of the threemonth strike, International Harvester believed it had scored a victory. But during the strike and in its aftermath, Harvester workers in Chicago indicated their unwillingness to adapt to the company's concept of harmonious labor relations. The product of a 1902 merger b!c!tween the McCormick Company and several smaller firms, International Harvester soon became one of the largest corporations in America, operating some twenty-eight manufacturing plants (along with steel mills and iron mines) mostly in Chicago and the Midwest. The McCormick Works complex , erected after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, reflected its nineteenth-century origins. Workers there produced reapers as well as a myriad of farm machinery, including planters, binders, and balers. Tractor Works, built in 1910 to produce the 10-20 tractor, was a single-story structure, modern and sleek compared to McCormick Works. At the height of employment following World War ll , more than 14,000 employees worked at the two plants. Assembly lines and machine shops in both factories were manned primarily by workers from the surrounding West The belief in a.fundamental adversity between labor and management expressed in this 1886 broadside was carried on into the 1950s by the FE-VE.

A long history of strikes and struggles had marked the McCormick Reaper Works (below) since 1886 when police shot several strikers at the plant (above). The violence sparked the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886.

Side neighborhoods. Poles made up 25 percent of Harvester's Chicago work force, and blacks, who often did the tough and dirty work inside the plant foundries, composed almost one-quarter of the work force at McCormick and 20 percent at Tractor. The remaining workers were for the most part Italian-, Irish-, and Bohemian-Americans. The FE leadership at McCormick and Tractor works reflected the black and ethnic concentration of the work force in the two plants. In the 1950s the president of the FE local at McCormick Works, Matt Halas, was Polish-American. Pete 45

Chicago History, Spring 1989

Workers make final adjustments at the end of a Tractor Works assembly line.

Neputy, an Italian-American, was the long-time local president at Tractor Works. International Harvester (and the McCormick family of Chicago who largely controlled it) had garnered a notorious reputation in union circles long before the 1950s. FE leaders would rarely miss an opportunity to invoke the Haymarket Affair as evidence of the company's long history of anti-unionism. In 1886 strikers seeking the eight-hour day and union recognition at the McCormick Reaper Works skirmished with Chicago police and Pinkerton detectives; several workers were wounded and at least one died. This violence prompted a May 4 demonstration at Haymarket Square. The famous Haymarket Riot convulsed Chicago into anti-union hysteria and led to the destruction of the craft unions at McCormick Reaper Works along with other workers' organizations in the city. Cyrus McCormick II, the young president of the McCormick factory, was hardly sorry to see the unions collapse; he had been trying for some time to oust them from his plant As the International Harvester company grew, union sympathizers continued to be unwelcome in the factories. As the 1920s began, Harvester introduced "works councils" in each plant. Composed of management and labor representatives, works councils, according to Harvester, provided employees with an "equal voice and vote with the management in the consideration of matters of mutual interest." In practice, however, the councils did little to alleviate the longstanding grievances of Harvester workers (many of which

involved the company's piecework pay system); since labor and management voted as separate blocks and the company president had the tiebreaking vote, management maintained true control over plant issues. But the presence of the councils helped Harvester stymie labor organization in the plants. Well into the late 1930s, after the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had brought industrial unionism to major auto and steel corporations, International Harvester stood apart as Chicago's main nonunion citadel. In 1938 Harvester workers at Tractor Works voted to join the Farm Equipment Workers' Organizing Committee, a CIO organization that would become the FE. The Midwest Daily Record, a prolabor newspaper, recalled Haymarket to underscore the significance of the FE's breakthrough at International Harvester: Today in International Harveste r you can walk up to a ny supervisor on the lunch hour and say: "Those Haymarket Martyrs, in my opinion, Super, had the right idea- unionism, solidarity." And yo u won't get fired or thrown in jail, no matter if the ghost of Cyrus McCormick does flail around in Hades like one of his own reapers at the sound of these words.

But not until 1941 did the FE bring McCormick Works , along with several other Harvester plants, under contract as well. Harvester workers in plant after plant voted to join the FE during World War II and the immediate postwar years. The United Auto Workers (UAW) organized several factories in the company's truck division as well. Forced to deal with "o utside unionism," as management called it, Harveste1- only grudgingly accepted its legally mandated relationship with organized labor. Before long, Harvester officials decided that some unions were better to deal with than others. In a 1947 letter to FE members, Harvester presidentjohn McCaffrey insisted that "the Company wants good relations with responsible unions." McCaffrey said that good relations were not possible with the FE, "because in dealing with FE we are dealing with an international union many of whose officers are irresponsible radicals , who have no respect for their contracts, and who are more interested in disruption than in labormanagement peace." The company dealt with twenty-two other unions, McCaffrey continued,

Labor's Last Stand all of whom "get along quite well with Harvester. It looks to us as if it is the FE-not the company, not the other 22 international unions-that is out of step." It might seem poetic justice that after the Harvester corporation's long tradition of antiunionism the company would be obliged to deal with the uniquely militant FE. The FE was led by Union president Grant Oakes, who had worked at Tractor Works , and by secretary-treasurer Gerald Fielde, a former machinist at McCormick Works. Both Oakes and Fielde h ad served in the 1930s on the works councils in their plants. Disillusioned with the councils' ineffectiveness, they had joined the underground organizing campaign that led to the FE's recognition at Harvester. Headquartered in Chicago, the FE never became a particularly big union. Its membership largely comprised midwestern workers, and by the late 1940s it represented about 50,000 employees, some 34,000 at fourteen Harvester plants and the rest at other agricultural implement companies. But it was the FE's philosophy and methods-not its size-that so offended Harvester management. In the post-World War II era, many CIO leaders whose unions had won recognition only aft.er protracted, often violent struggle began to seek a more cooperative relationship with the companies they had confronted as adversaries. These "labor statesmen," as they were called, believed that unions would be more secure and could achieve more for their members if they worked with management to help bolster corporate prosperity. As labor statesmanship grew to become the predominant ideology within the labor movement, FE leaders became more outspoken in their opposition to this philosophy. A union's strength, argued the FE, was grounded in its ability to recognize a fundamental adversity in labor-management relations. The FE admonished labor leaders who promoted cooperation with management for forgetting "the fact that there is only one side for business - its side- and that it operates on the principle of getting as mu ch as it can; it can be deterred in its exploitation only by appl ying economic and political power 365 days a year." The FE thus rejected the collective bargaining terms that came to define labor statesmanship, including restriction of the workers' right to strike and wage raise that were

FE-VE members meet on the grounds of McCormick Works.

tied to increased productivity. The FE leadership maintained that such provisions, which were favored by International Harvester's management, would guarantee greater profits for the company at the expense of Harvester employees. Productivity, the FE pointed out, could be increased only by stepping up the workers' pace (termed "speedup") or by displacing them entirely through the introduction oflabor-saving technology. The FE warned that it would not allow Harvester to achieve such objectives easily: "It is our obligation to prevent such speedup which gives the worker the short end of the stick. He makes more and gets less. But the company shows a higher profit." The FE made its opposition to labor statesmanship clear not only in rhetorical flourishes but also on the shop floor. Within the FE, no action was deemed unacceptable if it contributed to the favorable resolution of a worker's grievance. While many unions endorsed contract language prohibiting strikes during the life of the agreement, the FE generally refused to instruct union members who walked off the job to return to work. In fact, Harvester often charged that the FE encouraged or sponsored such "wildcat" strikes. FE members, indeed, readily walked off the job to ettle disagreements: Harvester plants represented by the FE experienced 849 work stoppages between 1945 and 1951. Walkouts were only one method FE stewards and other local leaders used to win disputes; workers also engaged in slowdowns and demonstrations on the shop floor to pressure the company. Very

Chicago History, Spring 1989 often, these walkouts and slowdowns were in response to Harvester's piecework system, a policy of paying most workers an hourly base rate plus incentive pay for producing beyond a specified level. Harvester constantly tinkered with its piecework rates, attempting to induce workers to produce more for the same or less money. The FE, however, frequently forced the company to rescind, or at least compromise, on its piecework revisions. The union's active resistance to adverse adjustments of piecework rates was a source of its strength on the shop floor. Harvester, increasingly vexed by the FE's aggressiveness, complained, "If a Company does not receive some assurance of regular and uninteffupted production through its union relations,just what does a company get out of collective bargaining?" The FE's confrontational tactics were not simply a reaction to company policy. They also reflected the particular political philosophy of the union's leadership. Many FE leaders were associated with the American Communist party, although none of them openly acknowledged membership. Because of its Communist party connections and staunch opposition to the growing orthodoxy of labor statesmanship, the FE became increasingly isolated from the mainstream labor movement. In 1949 the FE entered into a nominal merger with them uch larger (and also left-led) United Electrical Workers (UE); shortly afterward, both the FE and the UE, along with nine other unions said to be "communist dominated," were expelled from the CIO. Following the expulsion, the FE, which retained an autonomous structure within the UE, came under increasing attack from the UAW, led by the articulate labor statesman and crusading anticommunist, Walter Reuther. Reuther, insisting that FE members were disgusted with their left-wing leaders, claimed jurisdiction over the agricultural implement industry. He launched a series of "raids" on FE locals, attempting to force government-monitored elections that could strip the FE of representation at furm equipment plants. (If interest in a competing union was established at an organized plant-generally through petitions-the National Labor Relations Board provided that a vote be taken to determine the preference of the workers.) Fighting these raids throughout the late 1940s and 1950s severely taxed the FE's resources,

and the UAW wrested away many locals. At International Harvester, howeve1~ Reuther's campaign was wholly unsuccessful. o Harvester plant initially organized by the FE was lost in a raid. Harvester workers, it seemed, prefeffed the contentious FE, despite the obvious preference of Harvester management: "compared to our relationship with the FE-UE," one company official said, "our dealings with the UAW could only be called harmonious." UAW raids on McCormick Works and Tractor Works came as no surprise, for in many respects these two plants composed the heart of the FE. The FE's first local had emerged from Tractor Works, and the memory of Haymarket vested McCormick Works with special significance. Despite the proximity of the two plants, FE locals 108 at McCormick and 10 I at Tractor were very different in character. Local 108, perhaps reflecting the older, more skilled make-up of the McCormick work force, was considered quieter and more conservative than Tractor Works's Local 101. (One FE official believed tJ1at McCormick Works was a "weak link" in the union.) Local 101 was one of the more militant locals in the FE. According to Tractor worker Jimmy Majors, "if tJ1e company so much as even looked at the guys wrong they would wildcat." Majors, once a Local 101 official, recalled that walkouts at Tractor Works were staged-literally-at !J1e drop ofa hat: I remember when they rthe company] would try to speed-up, we had a signal. If I went in with my hat on, and came out of the foreman's office with my hat off, with my hat in my hands, that meant we didn't get the thing settled. Guys would start shutting their machines off and stuff like that, and the foreman would want to know what the hell was going on. They didn't know about the signals we had. So we had the damn thing up to nuff.

Attempted UAW raids at both Tractor and McCormick railed. In 1945 and again in 1949, !J1e UAW, perhaps believing McCormick Works to be the FE's "weak link," attempted to raid the plant, but workers remained loyal to !J1e FE. In 1950 the FE outpolled the UAW at Tractor Works. Two months before the 1952 International Harvester strike, !J1e UAW, pledging to free Local 108 members from the control of the "long arm of Moscow," launched another raid against

Labor's Last Stand

This aerial photograph shows the Tractor Works complex (foreground), bordered by 31st Street and Marshall Avenue, and the McConnick Works structures (center) on either side of the west fork of the south branch of the Chicago River (now filled in). Both factories have been demolished.

McCormick Works. Once again, however, the "conse1-vative" workers at McCormick voted to stay in the FE. The UAW may have believed it could prevail over the FE in 1952, and officials at International Harvester probably thought they could as well. At a time when it was not easy for individuals who were identified as even slightly left of center, the FE had a particularly radical reputation. The Cold War had produced the Korean War, and American politicians pleclgecl to expose and eliminate communism at home and abroad. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) made headline as it claimed to identify "reels" throughout the country. Despite this climate, FE members continued to act in their customarily combative fashion. In February of 1952 McCormick workers, in support of foundry employees who had been suspended for refusing to perform operations not normally required,

walked out of the plant and closed it for three days. The workers returned to their jobs only when Harvester management rescinded the suspensions. An even more dramatic FE action took place in early August. Harvester had announced that it would move its Twine Mill facility, a neighbor of McCormick Works that em ployed 860 people, to 1ew Orleans. FE Local 141, which represented the Twine Mill workers (most of whom were black and many of whom were women), decided to protest Ha1-vester's decision in the most direct manner possible. As the company knocked a hole in the plant's wall and began removing the machinery, Twine Mill workers left their jobs and bricked the hole back up. When Harvester officials persisted in their attempts to dismantle the machines, the workers began a sit-down strike inside the plant, the first Chicago had seen since the 1930s. After some three clays in the plant, the Twine Mill workers

Chicago History, Spring 1989

In response to Haroester's plan to move the Twine Mill to New Orl.eans, FE-VE members blocked the removal of equipment from the factory and refused to I.eave.

were ejected by the police, but they continued to try to prevent the company from removing machinery. Large picket line , formed by Twine Mill workers and FE members from McCormick Works and Tractor Works, tried to block trucks from leaving the facility; seventeen pickets were arrested. The company closed the plant and abandoned, for the moment, plans to remove equipment. The FE pledged to make the Twine Mill workers' jobs an issue in upcoming negotiations with Harvester. If Harvester officials had not already decided to try to oust the FE, the Twine Mill sit-down undoubtedly steeled their resolve. As its contract with Harvester neared expiration at the end of August, the FE issued its demands, which included a fifteen-cent-an-hour wage increase, a simplified wage structure, and further protection against speedup. Rather than respond to the union's demands, which was customary,

Harvester arrived at the bargaining table with a package of its own. Company officials candidly admitted that they hoped to remake entirely their agreement with the FE, which they called "the worst contract in Harvester." The company's primary objective was to overhaul its piecework system; under the FE contract in place before the strike, the company said, "so me of our employes were earning a full day's pay while working against incentive for only four, five , or six hours." Harvester's previous efforts to establish "accurate production standards," however, had been thwarted by the FE: "Each attempt made by the Company to bring realism into the picture with respect to providing a good day's pay for a good day's effort was resisted by the union through wildcat strikes, slowdowns and harassment tactics in the grievance procedure," said a Harvester labor relations official. Harvester thus also sought to alter the contract to reduce, or do away

Labors Last Stand with entirely, the union's ability to hinder the drive for greater production. Company officials were determined to eliminate the clause that allowed FE stewards paid time off while they investigated grievances, and they wanted to tighten up contract language prohibiting wildcat strikes. A four-cent-an-hour "annual improvement" increase-a wage hike tied to productivity-was part of the package Harvester offered in exchange for its piecework revisions. In short, Harvester's proposals would require workers to produce more and would undermine the FE's strength by limiting the union's ability to fight speedup. Harvester management could not have been surprised, then, when the FE rejected its package and went out on strike on August 21, 1952. The strike involved some 30,000 workers at Harvester fucilities throughout the country; almost half of them were from the company's Chicago plantsMcCormick, Tractor, the Twine Mill , and the West Pullman plant on the fur South Side. Harvester was prepared to meet the strike head on. Continuing to assert that Harvester workers were unwillingly trapped "in the grip of a radical union leadership," company officials decided to appeal directly to their employees to end the strike. Harvester kept its plants open during the strike and embarked on an extensiv.e campaign to coax workers to abandon the walkout. Company president John McCaffrey instructed foremen to visit strikers in their homes to encourage them to return to work. "They made house calls on the workers," one former FE member recalls, "as though they were trying to recruit L'iem into another organization." Employees and their spouses received numerous letters from the company during the strike. Harvester took out advertisements in city newspapers that urged strikers to come back but also offered work to whomever would cross the FE's picket lines. The company sent cars or hired buses to transport willing employees directly through the gates of the plants , past the crowds of pickets. During the 1952 strike Harvester management publicized and condemned the radical politics of the FE leadership more aggressively than it had done in the past. In one advertisement placed in the Chicago Tribune, complete with an ominous hammer and sickle in the background, Harvester indicated that it had long believed

"that the most influential leaders of FE-UE are either Communists or Communist sympathizers or fellow travelers." The Chicago press supported Harvester in its campaign lo discredit FE leaders in the eyes of the public and the rank and file . During the strike the papers often ran large headlines concerning "reds" in the union. The federal government assisted Harvester as well when the HUAC came to Chicago two weeks into the FE strike to investigate communism in Chicago unions. The friendly witnesses included an employee of Harvester management who had once worked at McCormick. He identified for the committee the FE leaders he thought were communists. FE officials called before the committee invoked the fifth amendment and declined to testify; "Refuse to Say Whether They are Commies" ran the Tribune headline. FE officials, although they had not anticipated Harvester's offensive, tried not to yield ground to the company through the strike . The union countered the negative press with an advertisement run in city newspapers citing the wage reductions in Harvester's proposals and insisting that "these cuts-not 'co mmunism '-a re what caused the strike." "It is our union's duty," the advertisement continued, "not to be deterred by hot and cold war hysteria and anti-labor laws from seeking an ever-increasing share of Harvester's ever-increasing profits." This was no ordinary labor dispute, claimed the FE, for Harvester's real purpose was to destroy the union: "This objective of liquidating FE-UE has obsessed Harvester management for 15 years." In a pamphlet put out during the strike, the union attempted to assess the historical roots of its conflict with Harvester: The background of this attack against the 30,000 members of the Farm Equipment Workers-UE was laid in 1886 when workers were fighting for the eight-hour day. Their fight was made bloody by Harvester controlled cops who attacked them, killing numbers in a vain effort to by [sic] this world wide corporation to hold back, by any means possible the advance of working people toward decent working conditions .... Today, Harvester is digging deep into its bag of vicious tricks, drawing once more on brutality and connivance in another attack aimed at the Company's favorite targets, American workers .... The current Harvester strike is a struggle with a history and a struggle that affects the wages and welfare of every worker, everywhere. 51

Chicago History, Spring 1989 The FE even bought television time, running a half-hour program early in October on a local station. Union members from Chicago and elsewhere told the story of the strike. But the FE could not match Harvester's resources, and more frequently the union chose to press its case directly in the public arena. These tactics were not dictated simply by a lack of funds, however, for the programs the FE developed during the strike reflected the union's style and were designed as much to shore up the membership's commitment as to influence public opinion. More than two hundred people noisily protested outside the old Federal Courthouse when the HUAC appeared there. The demonstrators, most of them FE members, held placards proclaiming "What Is Red About A Raise?" and "No Scabbing By Congress." CaITied at the head of the parade of pickets was an American

flag and a mock coffin bearing a sign reading "Help Bury the Un-American House Committee." In mid-October Harvester executives and those passing by Harvester's corporate headquarters on Michigan Avenue encountered a picket line made up of wives and children of FE members marching to emphasize the plight of the strikers' families. But much of the FE's activity was focused away from the downtown area, as the union appealed to the communities suITounding the plants to support tl1e strike. The FE continued to picket the plants, its first and most important line of defense during tl1e strike. "A strong picket line is the best negotiator," the Local 108 strike bulletin said. "The Company will not begin to bargain until we convince them by our solid unity on the picket lines that this strike cannot be broken." To interfere with the company's efforts to bring workers into the

Worken- gather to listen to the strike call of FE-VE Local 108 president Matt Halas, August 21, 1952.

Labor '.s Last Stand plants-"scab-herding" as the union called it-the picket lines were large and combative. "The members of this Union, " warned the McCormick local bulletin, "will never forget the name ofa scab." Hank Graber, a striker at Tractor Works, described some of the methods FE members used to discourage employees who were inclined to return to work:

know if he had the bricks there or not. He had a neat method of rolling a cigarette; it really was a masterpiece. I don't know how he did it, but he could roll a cigarette with one hand, his left hand, and with his right hand he could toss a brick through a window ofa scab's car with a policeman standing right alongside of him , and the policeman didn't know where the hell the brick came from .

We kept on every day, on the picket lines, and we held our union together pretty well. We used to drill holes in the encl of electric light bulbs and filled them with yellow paint. One way or another, somehow a lot of scab cars were painted yellow. You could pick out a scab's car two blocks away with yellow paint. The yellow signifies a scab, a coward. We had another fellow, Leroy, he was quite a characte1: He had a fifty-two-inch waistline, which was quite an advantage. He could put two half bricks underneath his jacket and you would not

These picket line skirmishes occurred daily throughout the strike. Some FE members even sacrificed their automobiles, setting their old cars on fire underneath the overpass on Western Avenue to intimidate scabs and strikebreakers. Since few people knew to whom the cars belonged, Harvester employees were encouraged to think twice about their own autos before crossing picket lines. "The idea was to create a situation where nobody would want to come around the

Scabs file inside the gates of M cConnick Works past a crowd ofjeering pickets, October 3, 195 2.

Now-you may have a better idea of "Harvester's Labor Problem" 'tXT" RAn Ions bee oemltive to the-dy ruh of n.,., Items about

VV Harvester labor troubles. The seeming Communist line followed

by certain union leaden bu been one of which we have been long

awsre. It is now out in the open u a result of testimony before the United Stata Ho.Joe of llepNMntati- Co!Dllll'tlee on un-American aetiviti.., at hearinp in Chicaao. You may find in th... Cbiugo newspaper beadlin.. at least a partial answer to the frequent question asked by our friends and nei&hbon, ' 'Why is there 10 much labor trouble at Harwltar?" >.. to the loyalty and faii-.mlndednea ,ad decency of the maJority of our e m ~ we do not ban the aliahtat doubl Howenr, - - . beli...111a111 ol. than art bemc milled by the lnden of 11oe r - F.qalJm,el wamn Councll-thlllad EJ.ctri..1 1t

are••

w---.

INTERNATIONAL

is our belief, and bu been for many yoon, that the moot lnftuential leaders of FE-UE are either Communists or l)'lllpo.thizen and fellow lrlvelen. Under the circumatanca, you may well ulc: " If the Compeny belit'Vft FE-UE to be a Communilt-domlnated union, why does the Compeny cantinm to dool with FE-UE ?." That is a proper question. The answer la :

Commuclst

Under the present labor la..,. of the United Stat.e - haft no choice. FE-UE bas been certified o barpin.inc q,:nt for U- uni1I by the National Labor Relation, Boonl. U we withdrow ,_...mo., from FE-UE we would probably be found suilty of III llllfalr 1-ar practice under the law. In abon, weu.compelled by lawto......,..IDll-1 aDd ill loodors~aurbeliolo aboat thaa.

w1111r.r,m:

• HARVESTER IN

Labor 's Last Stand pl a nt," o ne McCo rmi c k strike r reca ll s. Th e C hi cago po li ce, ho weve r, surrounde d th e pl ants in g reat numbe rs; a ll but four o f th e city's thirtye ight po li ce distri cts provid e d d e ta il s ass igne d to p ro tec t H a rveste r e mpl oyees wh o wa nte d to re turn to wo rk. "We will give a ll th e pro tecti o n we can to th ose who want to wo rk," Po li ce Commi ssio ner O 'Co nn e r a nno unced . Arrests o f strike rs we re co mmo n, a nd FE me m bers were parti cularl y wa ry o f th e h ead o f th e po li ce la bo r d e ta il , Ca pt. Geo rge Ba rn es, who, acco rd in g to Jimmy Maj o rs, "wo uld just come o ut a nd at rando m pi ck o ut g uys to throw in j a il. We a lways had to kee p ba il mo ney in o ur poc ke ts." T he FE ma inta in ed th a t th e po li ce d e partm e nt was workin g no t in th e publi c inte rest, but in H arveste r's. T he co mpa ny's strike-breaking e ffo rts, th e FE said , "co uld o nl y have bee n blu e- printe d with p o li ce guara nt ees." Th e FE's pro bl e ms with th e po li ce, and with bad publi city, inte nsifi ed in ea rl y O ctobe r, six wee ks into th e strike. Willi a m Foste r, a bl ac k wo rke r at McCormi ck wh o had re turn ed to hi s j o b ea rl y in th e strike, was hit in th e h ead a nd kill ed as he left hi s ho me for wo rk o n O cto ber 3. Th e press re po rted th at d oze ns o f FE offi cia ls we re be in g qu estio ned in co nn ecti o n with the killing. H arveste r o ffe red a $ 10,000 rewa rd fo r in fo rm ati o n abo ut Foste r's d eath. Of"! O cto ber 10 H aro ld Wa rd , a strike r fro m th e McCo rmi ck Wo rks fo undry a nd th e fin a ncia l secre tary of FE Local 108, was cha rged with Fos te r's murde r. Th e FE insisted th a t Ward , o ne o f th e unio n's b lack lead e rs, was th e victim o f "a new H ay ma rke t fra me- up" a nd fo rm ed a na tio na l co mmiuee fo r his d e fe nse. Th e Strike Call, a publi ca ti o n iss ued by bl ack FE me mbe rs, asse rted th a t H arve te r was be hind th e atte mpt to "lega ll y lynch egro lead e rs like Haro ld Wa rd in ord e r to fri ghte n a ll milit a nt Negroes." So m e 300 FE m e mb e rs a ppeared a t fe lo ny co urt fo r Wa rd 's h ea ring, a nd a g roup o f th e m h eckl ed a nd booed th e sta te's ctllo rn ey o utside th e co urtroo m . Wa rd was fo und no t g uilty in Dece mbe r, after th e strike e nde d . In th e m ea ntim e, th e Chi cago pa pers fo und Ward a nd th e FE guilty be fo re the tria l; o ne Sun-Times e dito ri a l procla im e d : "No res p o nsibl e uni o n Using newspaper headlines as proof, International H arvester's advertisement in the September 8, 1952, C hi cago Da il y News tried to convince the public that FE-VE leaders were communists.

Local 108 financial secretmy Harold Ward (left, shaking hands) was charged with the murder of McConnick strikebreaker William Foster.

wo rth y o f re prese nting Am e ri ca n worke rs need stoop Lo vio le nce a nd Gn a ll y murd e r lo win a labo r dispute . It is time fo r th e H a rveste r wo rkers to di sown th e FE-UE . . .. " Harveste r, wa nting to ease e ntry into th e plants fo r its no nstrikin g e mpl oyees, po inted to Foste r's d ea th a nd th e FE's pi cke t lin e milita ncy wh e n it we nt to co urt see king a n injun cti o n to re tri ct pi cke tin g a t McCo rmi c k Wo rk s. Grante d o n O cto be r 16, th e injun cti o n limited th e FE to no mo re th a n six pi ckets at eac h McCormi ck ga te, a nd th e judge pro mised to e xte nd th e restricti o n if pi cke t lin e vio le nce occ urred e lsewh e re. Th e FE's prese nce a t th e pl a nts was thu e ffective ly e limina te d , a nd Ha rveste r was g ratifie d as m ore e mpl oyees we nt back to th e ir j o bs. Co nsid e ring th e FE's loss o f po we r, ho weve r, it is signifi cant th at m o re strike rs did no t re lllrn to wo rk. A wee k be fo re th e strike's e nd in mid -Nove mbe r, Harves te r's fi gu res indi ca ted th at a bo ut 35 pe rce nt o f th e wo rk force had re turn e d to McCormi ck a nd 20 pe rce nt had re turn ed Lo Tracto1~ a nd in all o nl y 8,000 e mpl oyees we re wo rking throughout th e co mpa ny's pl a nts . H a rves te r, h o we ve r, cl a im e d th a t it had res um ed produ ctio n at a ll its pl ants, a nd with th e injun cti o n in pl ace th e compa ny was eve n less like ly to com e to te rms with the FE. As th e strike entered its third month , the difficulti es the FE faced-including increasing fin a ncia l ha rdship e ndured by its me mberspromised o nl y to get worse . This stark reality, along with th e beli ef that H arveste r would take advantage of th e strike to completely destroy the FE if it could, compelled th e union's leaders to 55

To tlze Puhlic:

HERE IS THE REASON FOR THE HARVESTER STRIKE F

ARM EQUIPMENT-UE has represented International Har• vester workers for 15 years. On May 14 we sat down with the company representatives to negotiate wage increases and contract improvements.

Under such conditions, the Comp•ny would siphon back • so-called 4c production increaje , as well as most or all of any cost-of-living adiu,tments. The Horvesler Company hu made demands for over I ,000 classification and contract changes that would depres, wages by over 30c an hou r!

There is no arg ument aga inst workers needing higher pay. Government figures iusl released show the average city fam il y had lo go $400 in debt lo make both ends meet in 1950-and it was far worse in 1951 .

OTHER UMIOMS HIT TOO

In thre e month, of negotiations the Company countered every Union demand for higher wages with demands that the Union accept wage cuts. This is the same Company which , in moving its Twine Mill south, refuses even to consider the future of 865 faithful worke rs who have 10,000 years of IH seniority !

Such wage cuts have bee n put into effect in Har vester's Milwauke plant (AFL) and in the plants under contract lo the UAW-CIO. The cuts caused a long strike th is year in the Milwaukee plant, and are the cause of the current UAW strike al Melrose Park.

Can the Company afford wage increases? Let's look al the record:

All these strikes , ours included , are the last resort of working men and women who are determined to secure economic justice from a corporation which is sweating more and more production and profits out of its employees each year.

1945-IH profits after taxes . . $24,477,000 1948-IH profits after taxes . . $55,679,000 1951-IH profits after taxes . . $63,001,000 But the Company insisted on wage cuts! And they an• swered all Union demands for reasonable contract improvements with demands that the Union amend 60% of the old contract clauses in a manner favo rable to Harvester.

PAY CUTS, PAY CUTS On August 20, before negotiations collapsed , the Company notified several thousand employees that it was changing their iob classifications . And here's what that meant-an actual example : • George Skinner , an employee in Oepertment l,t at the Chicago Tractor Works , with 32 years ' Hrv ice, was notified that he was bein g reclass ified fr om labor Grade 12 to Labor' Grede 8. n,• fir st pay, $2 . 17 an hour; the Hcond p• ys only $ 1.89 an houra 28c pay cut !

• S~inner will eoutin ue to be pa id hi s $2. 17 es an " over-rate ." But

when he is prom<aed, tra nsfe rred , or laid off, the new man going on the job will get only $1.89. This mea ns widesprud w,ge cuts. Thousands of men end women move up end down in Harvester 's w,ge structure every yea r.

Productivity per worker increues at the rate of 16c per hour each y~ar-nol the 4c reflected in phoney productivity increases. (Industry sources.) In 194 1 profit per Harvester worker wu $1 ,060; in 1951 it was $2 ,532 . (Company financial reports.)

REASONABLE UMIOM DEMANDS Here are the Union demands as made May 14, and as they stand right now : I. A 15c hou rl y general wage increase. 2. Elimination of the differences in pay between plants for the same wor~ . 3. Adiustment of wage inequities , especia ll y for skilled , dayraled , and office workers. 4. Real , a f e guards aga in,+ wage cuts , job-price cuts, and speed-up. 5. "'dequate health and welfare plan . 6. Safeguard ing of the iobs of McCormick Twine Mill workers. 7. A liberalized vacation plan . 8. Better working conditions th rough more effective application of seniority, improved grievance procedure, and increased opportunities for promotions.

• Tl,, devaluat ion of t~o usands of jobs mHns • gener,I lowering of the average wag e. Nor will any of the "over-rates" get ,ny of the increases negot iated by the Union. S~inner, suddenly •n "over-rate," will not get en increase until the Un ion ne9ot:a • e1 raises in utess of 28c hourl y!

9. Withdrawal of Harvester's drastic contract proposals and rescinding of all recently annot•aced wage cuts.

In addition to th is wage-cutting program, the Company demanded contract clauses that permit d•ywork and piecew0<k wages to be cut throughout tha life of the contract at the Company's will.

W ith the strike fully effective we resume negotiation, this week. We are cooperating fully with the U. S. Government, through its Conciliation Service, to end the strike-with raise, and contract improvements.

FARM EQUIPMENT-UE • NATIONAL HARVESTER CONFERENCE BOARD UNITED ELECTRICAL, RADIO & MACHINE WORKERS OF AMERICA

<iElt,t.LD flELDE, Director, Ha,.Htor Coofor•••• loarcl 37 South Ashlaocl loulovarcl, Chlcat• 7, IIL

UE lotoroatlonol PrHlcloot, ALIEU FITZGERALD 11 last 51st Stroot, How Torti 22, H-. Y.

Labor's Last Stand end the walkout. On November 15 FE official Gerald Fielde looked grim as he signed the contract that represented, in Harvester's words, "total defeat" for the leadership of the FE-UE. The agreement was certainly devastating for the union. It included all the wage and piecework revisions Harvester had originally sought and a tighter no-strike clause. The FE also lost paid time off for stewards. In addition, FE members who had been fired during the strike would not be reinstated, crippling the FE's local leadership in several plants, and the company insisted on instituting "escape periods" that allowed workers to decline a check-off of their union dues or to resign from the FE altogether. Harvester managers were understandably pleased with the contract that they said "eliminates the worst abuses formerly practiced

by this union and should enable the Company to operate its plants in an orderly manner:' For their part, FE leaders did not try to "sell" the contract Lo the membership, but instead insisted that signing it had been necessary to save the union. "The FE-UE union has survived the combined onslaught of the massed enemies of labor and beaten back all their efforts to destroy the union," read an FE statement after the strike. "We go back into the Harvester plants determined to go on fighting for higher standards which are possible only through militant unionism." Despite the character of the contract, Harvester managers discovered that their assessment of the FE's "total defeat" proved to be a bit premature. Tractor Works's officials may have realized th is first. Hank Graber re cal led returning to work after the strike ended:

Left, on August 27, 1952, the FE-UE clarified its reasons for striking in this Chicago Daily News advertisement. Below, the wives and children of FE-UE members picket International Harvester headquarters on Michigan Avenue, October 13, 1952.

Chicago Hi.story, Spring 1989

The shell of a burned-out car was a menacing warning to those who thought about scabbing.

The night before we had to go back to work, we had a meeting. We said, well, when we go back to work we will go back singing "Solidarity Forever:â&#x20AC;˘ And we will put [FE Local 101 president] Pete Neputy in front. We had at least a thousand standing outside the plant waiting until the whistle blew befo1Âˇe we went back to work. When the whistle blew, Pete Neputy stepped out in front, and we all marched in behind him . Then we sang "Solidarity Forever and the union makes us strong." We shouted that real loud. When you have a thousand men shouting that real loud, believe me, that shook up the front office. These guys just lost the strike, and they come back as though they had won a tremendous victory. Imagine.

There were other indications that Harvester employees would not renounce the FE. An effort to decertify the FE at McCormick Works begun by employees who had worked through the strike ultimately disintegrated. In October of 1952 the UAW had attempted a raid on the FE local

at Harvester's Canton, Illinois, plant. The FE had won the election there in the midst of the strike. (The plant was not involved in the 1952 walkout.) After the strike, an admitted defeat for the FE leadership, workers at the West Pullman plant and at two other Harvester plants nonetheless remained loyal to the FE and voted down the UAW. Just as the strike did not completely undermine the FE leadership, the new contract did not solve all of Harvester's problems with FE members on the shop floor. In March of 1953, for example, Tractor Works managers suspended more than 270 workers, including Pete Neputy, in an effort to enforce some of the new disciplinary provisions of the contract. The rest of the work force promptly walked out of the plant in protest and closed it for four days. FE leaders were undoubtedly heartened by the commitment and militancy that Harvester workers continued to express after the 1952

Labor's Last Stand strike, but they also had to recognize that the long walkout and the new contract had undermined the union's strength. In 1955,just before the 1952 contract with Harvester was set to expire, FE leaders decided to leave the UE and enter into a merger with their old rival, the large and financially powerful UAW. The move into the UAW was motivated in large part by the belief that Harvester was prepared to try once again to destroy the FE. Preserving union representation for Harvester workers, FE leaders determined , was their primary concern. Once inside the UAW, however, Harvester workers continued to make things difficult for the company. Walkouts still occurred and grievance rates at the plants were extraordinarily high. The rhetoric of former FE members now in UAW locals maintained a particular edge. In 1959, in response to Harvester's announcement that it would close McCormick Works, a pamphlet put out by the UAW local there charged:

with a "communist dominated" union. In 1952, however, Harvester workers in Chicago and elsewhere not only reaffirmed their membership in the FE, but the y fought-often literally-to keep the union ali,Âˇe . "The rank and file loved that union," said Frank Mingo , once an FE member and foundry employee at Tractor Works. FE members apparently believed , along with their elected leaders, that their interests and those of the company were fundamentally in conCTicL; they wanted union representation that would contend with Harvester's managers, not cooperate with them. In a particularly reactionary time, the Chicagoans who went Lo their jobs at the McCormick and Tractor plant chose Lo be members of a combative, particularly radical union . The "conservatism" assumed of these workers, and others like them, is due some re-evaluation.

McCormick Works, Chicago, the oldest and most historic oflnternational Harvester's plants, is to be closed, its buildings razed, and the Janel offered for ale .... The story of the closing of McCormick, a plant which for 67 years produced profits that made the McCormick family a symbol of Gold Coast wealth and affiuence, is the story of what's wrong with our economy.. .. A prosperity that is based on fewer workers and farmers each year will lead to social chaos unless a greater share of the profits derived from improved production methods goes to the people who buy the tractors and the cars.

The Ernest DeMaio and Irving Meyers papers housed in the CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection are scrapbook compilations of newspaper articles and advertisements that appeared during the 1952 strike. The papers of David Rothstein, defense counsel for the FE-UE, are also in the Archives and Manuscripts Collection. Excellent Harvester histories include Robert Ozanne, A Century of Labor Relations at McCormick and International Harvester (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967) and Barbara Marsh , A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1985). For more on labor relations see David Brody, Workers in Industrial America ( ew York: Oxford University Press, 1980), especially the essay entitled "The Uses of Power I: Industrial Battlegrounds." William Serrin, The Company and the Union (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) is an examination of the UAW and the evolution of labor statesmanship.

In the 1970s Tractor Works also was shut clown. International Harvester's battle with the workers in these two factories finally ended-but only when the gates of the plants were closed for good. The FE's experience al McCormick and Tractor works reveals more than the clash ofhardline management and radical union leadership across a bargaining table. Historians of the postWorld War II era often presuppose, as did Har,Âˇester management, that America's working class had become essential!)' conservative. As the red scare and l\lcCanhyism began to sweep the country, workers like those at Tractor and McCormick works-especially with the pl a nts' heavy concentration of ethnic Americans-should have been al odds, so the standard interpretations hold ,

For Further Reading

Illustrations 42-43, CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection, David Rothstein Papers; 44, CHS, ICHi-16099; 45 top, CHS, ICHi-03659; 45 bottom, 46, avistar Archives; 47, UE Archives, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; 49, Navistar Archives; 50, CHS, DNO7865; 52, CHS, D 0-8267; 53, CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection, David Rothstein Papers; 54, CHS Library; 55, UE Archives, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; 56, CHS Library; 57, UE Archives, University Library System , University of Pittsburgh; 58, CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection, David Rothstein Papers. 59

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YESTERDAY'S CITY BY PERRY R: DUIS

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: rowd nn;Jtoyed mm rungregates out.side 563 W Madison Strrel, . /910 .• uuking ji,r work wrl1 never Prl\)', but widespread r mployment agPl l{Jjraud made the expmenrr f'VPII more /raumatic. , CHS,I/CHi-05598.

.Ji

l'erry_~ !uis is associate professor of history al the University

of llliuois ·at Chicago and a frnJ7te11/ contributor to Chicago Histo

•

A story in the Italian-language newspaper L'Italia on February 16, 18951 cont~ined a desperate _ Italian immigrant Plea for help. Two h .irn !'f~..-.11 laborers, recruited foi:.f ~~ '] manual construction work, had made th~ vay in ooxcar_s to the Pacific Northwest and were livin mder conditions that were uncomfortaole , est. But the mall probwithout

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paying them . _They were stranded, and only reluctant local charity in the form of beans and Âˇ potato flou,r kept them from starving. L'ltalia asked for contributions from Chicagoans to pay for the starving workers' tickets home. Similar cases of in1migrant exploitation, often at the hands offell_ow countrymen, dot the ethnic press of late nin_~ teenth- and early twentieth-century Chicago. ]'hose looking f01-work were often

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Chicago History, Spring 1989 exploited. While some manner of placing people in employment exists in all societies, Chicago's rapid growth and its emergence as a transportation hub created enormous opportunities for unscrupulous employment agents and a growing call for change. "Intelligence offices," as employment agencies were first known, were a fairly insignificant part of Chicago's early labor market. In that village society, most information about jobs passed informally in conversations. Only one employment service existed in 1846: the "intelligencer's office" operated by J. W. Norris in connection with his city directory service, the "Corrected Register of the Inhabitants." Norris's register, a consistently updated list of residents' addresses and places of employment, offered information about the occupational and residential stability of any potential employer or employee. This was an asset in a town whose 12,088 residents included many drifters. Norris and his later competitors appear to have serviced skilled workers. Jobseekers with little more than a strong back to offer were largely left on their own to search newspaper want ads or to stand at the employer's gate and hope. Irregular and unpredic.t able employment patterns occasionally interrupted Chicago's usual seasonal work cycles. During normal years, crowds of unemployed streamed into the city during the winter when farm work and the shipping season had both ended. When warm weatl1er returned, many workers migrated to the country. Other jobseekers then took their places, including young men who had spent the winter attending commercial colleges and now clutched freshly minted diplomas. Prosperity and depression modified this cycle. During boom construction times of the mid-1840s, for instance, the Illinois and Michigan Canal absorbed many of the unskilled. And in 1863 the Union Pacific Railroad advertised in Chicago newspapers for a thousand men to help construct the transcontinental railway; inducements included a homestead and exemption from the draft. In other years, workers fell prey to violent shifts in the economy. Struggling through a depression was difficult and was worsened by the misfortune of arriving in Chicago just as the boom turned to bust. The Civil War, for instance, at first brought a severe economic slump to the city, which was

WANTED!

IMMEDIATELY! 3,000 LABORERS

To Work on Levees in Louisiana and Mississippi. Wages $45 to $50 per Month. and Board. Steady Work guaranteed all winter and spring.

ALSO--5OO WOOD CHOPPERS For Michigan and Indiana. Highest wages paid. Steady Employment all winter and spring.

AlS0-Âˇ250 MEN For the Pi.nary. Highest wnges pnid nn<l transpor tation furnished.

ALSO, 1,000 Rail Road Graders, T rack-lnyers, Spikers, &c., wi t h good pn.y and board the yen.r round. For fllrflwr inrormulion 1q 111l~ 111

OLMSTED & S NELL, N o. 100 Mndison S t reet, R oom 4.

Cl!TCAOO. ILL.

Although Olmsted & Snell advertised high wages and steady work, legitimate jobs were never guaranteed. CHS, ICHi-21063.

followed by a manufacturing boom. After the war, a flood of returning soldiers and the large number of war widows created a severe unemployment crisis; estimates of the idle ran into the tens of thousands. During the late 1860s skilled mechanics and those who built steam engines and farm machinery were in high demand , but many unskilled workers were still unemployed. The controversy surrounding employment agencies began after the Civil War when the expanding railway network and the burgeoning industrial city seemed to offer abundant opportunities for employment. The railway also made it easier for workers to relocate when they heard of possible employment, making the labor market much more volatile. Unskilled laborers, both men and women, flocked to Chicago in great numbers seeking jobs. Intelligence offices took advantage of the workers' optimism and naivete. The victims of this vicious form of fraud were most often trusting people who believed the promises of strangers. As Karen Halttunen has pointed out in her perceptive book Confidence Men and Painted Women, Americans had great difficulty coming to grips witJ1 the growing anonymity of ninteenth-century society. No one

Yesterday's City seemed to know who to trust, and hustlers needed only to dress and speak well to dupe their victims. City directories listed seven intelligence offices in 1866. During the same year the Chicago Tribune exposed the first major employment scams. Chicago sharpsters had been quick to take advantage of opportunities during Reconstruction by dispatching sixty carpenters to Memphis. The men each paid a two-dollar serv ice fee to the Chicago agent, plus their own transportation costs, only to find no carpentry jobs waiting for them down South. Another scheme, one of the few that victimized employers, took advantage of the perpetual shortage of domestic servants. One agency charged housewives fifty or seventy-five cents to send over a servant, who would quit after on ly a few hours on the job. A replacement would require yet another fee. A year later, the Tribune warned readers that its co lumns were being used to defraud unsuspecting employment seekers. While sharpsters were promising placement in high-paying jobs, they were asking for a fifty-cent fee to cover the cost of placing the

The railroad allowed the nation's unemployed the mobility to head for other cities to find work. Unscrupulous employment agencies used the rails as well to send workers lo distant, nonexistant jobs (above). CHS, ICHi-05596. These laborers in the 1880s (below) were lucky enough to find comtruction work. CHS, ICHi-21064.

Chicago History, Spring 1989 of course, of the terms "confidence game" and "con artist"). Establishing the veneer of respectability through newspaper ads and downtown office space was vital to winning this trust. It was easy to assume that the press would not accept fraudulent advertising and that crooked outfits could not operate from respectable Loop office buildings. Impressive names, often including "and Company," lent an air oflegitimacy to bogus agencies. For instance, the "C hicago Guarantee and Reference Company," which operated in September 1891, victimized men and women searching for desirable clerical positions. Often, the con would claim to be a "special agent" of a railway or contractor to give his operation the ring of official authority. Good appearances and nice clothing also helped establish the victim's confidence in the crook. Virtually every one of the many complaints that

In his book published in 1907 (above) detective Clifton R. Woolridge tell.s of the sly schemes of Chicago swindlers. CHS Library. Below right, sharpsters' advertisements in country newspapers lured naive young women lo the city in spite of their fathers' laments. From The White Slave Hell, CHS Library.

advertisements. After hundreds of people had been duped, the crooks fled town. Although this type of fraud was relatively new to Chicago, these early examples contained most of the essential features of swindles that would be carried on for decades afterward. An analysis of some forty-nine employment agency frauds reported in the Chicago press before 1900 reveals the factors that made an employment scam successful. An important factor was anonymity. Obviously, the criminal could not reveal his true identity or reputation. Chicago's rapid growth and its function as a rail hub made it ideal for swindles because at any one time tens of thousands of strangers were in town. The location of an agency office in the crowded downtown or in a transient district rather than a neighborhood also enhanced the possibility of anonymity. The few instances when victims recognized swindlers ended in chases through the city streets and even thrashings by angry mobs. · A successful employment scam involved gaining the victim's confidence in the crook (the root,

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Yesterday :S City surfaced in the press followed a common pattern: the unsuspecting people paid money to be informed of jobs that did not exist. The requirement of an advance fee also made the victim feel that he or she was the untrustworthy party. These fees, usually between two and five dollars, were not great but were sometimes the last ofa victim's money. Too often, however, those who had been duped regarded their losses as either too embarrassing to report to the police or too small to be worth the effort. Obvious ly, the advance fee system enabled the crook to collect money and then depart before the discovery of th e con. The small fees , normally half of what legitimate agencies charged, quickly added up to large profits. Distance was often a critical factor in the success of employment scams. A crook frequently depended on putting as much distance as possible between himself and his victim . Once agents had collected service fees, they often took advantage of the expanding railway network to dispatch victims to distant places. In the bitterly cold January of 1886 one victim was told to report to a nonexistent rail construction project a hundred miles away. He had no choice but to walk back to Chicago, pawning his watch and overcoat along the way for food and lodging. This method especially victimized Italian immigrants, who made up a large portion of the legitimate rail construction crews and were thus more credulous when presented with scams that involved travel. Some Chicagoans advertised in small town newspapers to attract victims. During fluctuations in the labor market, such as depressions or even the construction of the World's Columbian Exposition , rural laborers could be uprooted more easily. Many victims were immigrants who made the mistake of trusting someone simply because he was from their native land. The problem was first recorded in 1847, when an Irish labor contractor in New York had brought over a group of workers from his famine-swept homeland witl1 a false promise of finding them employment in Chicago . No jobs awaited them , and the abandoned famili es took up squatters' residences on Goose Island , a manmade island in the Chicago River they renamed "Kilgubbin" after their homeland. The postbellum rail construction boom sent a dozen Scandinavian labor agencies to recruit workers in the Swedish neighborhoods of the

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A country youth just arriving in the city was an easy target for swindlers. From Wicked City, CHS Library.

North Side. Some even placed "runners" at the depots to meet immigrant trains and make grand promises of high-paying jobs. Often, the agencies were working under a contract to supply a specific number of workers and would resort to any means to fill their quota. Wages, in turn, were paid through the contractors, who deducted inflated living expenses and ticket fares to railhead camps. Perhaps the most vicious of the labor agency scams involved a dishonest padrone. He preyed on Italian immigrant workers who had been displacing the Scandinavians in rail construction . His system combined tl1e worst forms of exploitation-primarily the theft of wages through overcharges for services-with nearly complete control over the timid and naive immigrants' lives. The padrone served as intermediary between the workers and American society, controlling where they lived , the food they ate, the clothes they wore , the tools they used, and all knowledge of their new land. In exchange for their unquestioning trust and their hard

Chicago History, Spring 1989 work, the men received abject poverty and the loneliness of separation from their families. On occasion, they found themselves abandoned by the padrone. Women were often victimized by sharpsters who took advantage of their naivete. By the late 1860s reports emerged of young women being abducted and imprisoned in brothels after answering want ads promising high wages for easy work. Some rural newspapers refused to carry advertising designed to lure young people to the city, but in 1894 a Tribune columnist noted that each year the paper received hundreds of inquiries from young country women regarding their prospects for success in the city. After advising them to stay where they were, the columnist recounted the pitfalls of city life. A young woman, unfamiliar with the city, would end up in a thirdrate roominghouse or worse. If she was pretty she would "have to carry herself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination," but if she was homely the doors of opportunity were "firmly closed against her." While most of the intelligence office crooks appear to have been independent operators, organized rings appeared by the 1890s. Multiple outlets not only enhanced the operations' air of legitimacy but also· allowed for tl1e rotation of personnel so that victims would be less likely to recognize them. One ring was rumored to have made more than $10,000 in two months. Another sophisticated scheme linked agents who clustered along Canal Street with cohorts among the foremen at the ten construction companies digging the Sanitary and Ship Canal. In January 1894,James Eggen reportedly bilked more than 2,000 men by collecting three dollars from each and then sending them to find "Mr. Watstodoe" ("what's to do") at the canal. Other victims were charged an additional two dollars for transportation to the work sites plus two dollars for "commissions" to work and then fired after a few hours' labor in order to make room for others. They recovered none of their seven-dollar fee. Some workers avoided the crooked downtown agencies in favor ofless formal "hiring halls" that often were operated in conjunction with saloons. Employers and potential employees cu~tomarily patronized particular bars where the unemployed were welcome to spend idle hours provided that they purchase drinks. In the transient 68

districts on the north, west, and south fringes of the downtown, earlier versions of today's day labor agencies listed short-term jobs on blackboards. These agents provided groups of laborers to employers and extracted their extortionate fees as a percentage of the wages they distributed to the men. The pattern of employment agency fraud generally remained consistent between 1866 and 1900, the only significant changes being gradual increases in fees and an increase in the number of organized rings. During the last decade of the century, however, the depressed economy not only greatly inflated the number of cons but also generated a strong demand for reform. What was so distressing to newspapers, legitimate agencies, and the police was the ease with which con artists escaped prosecution. Frequently those who were apprehended could point to office signs or to

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Left, swind/,ers often needed only to speak and to dress well to gain their victims' trust. From The Wh ite Slave H e ll, CHS Library. Above, construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal employed many, but after having paid transportation and commission faes to employment agents, men waiting in line al tlw canal (below) could only hope that jobs were assured. CHS, ICHi-21065, ICHi-21066.

Chicago History, Spring 1989

As early CLS the 1860s the newcomer could tum to the YMCA'.s employment bureau (above) instead of relying on anonymous strangers. From Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, CHS Library. This Jonnerly homeless, unemployed boy (below) became a success thanks to the YMCA'.s bureau. CHS, ICHi-21043.

fine print on contracts that clearly stated that the agent was merely selling what he believed to be information about job openings and that the contract did not guarantee a job. Because of this loophole few were successfully prosecuted, and the city's 1856, 1882, and 1883 license laws did little to reform the situation. In the ethnic communities, reformers at first relied on the power of newspaper exposes to stamp out the fraud, but these produced few results. They at last resorted to the idea ofa moral substitute: an honest employment agency that would drive crooked operations out of business. Immigrant aid societies active among Scandinavian and German communities used this idea with great success, and this service would grow in popularity during the 1890s. Labor unions were one example of a legitimate alternative to exploitation. The Building Trades Council and Carpenters' Union, for instance, established a bureau at 167 (now 180 West) Washington Street in 1891. Workers could use comfortable lounge rooms on the upper floor of the building as a hiring hall, and neither they nor the employers were charged a service fee. Other unions and occupational organizations, such as the National Association of Women Stenographers, had similar arrangements. But these alternatives only serviced organized and skilled labor, a small percentage of the Chicago work force. Employers who wanted nonunion or unskilled laborers, of course, avoided them. Various charitable organintions also tried to provide honest alternatives to the cons. The YMCA began its labor bureau during the 1860s and was overwhelmed by the number of jobseekers. The Ladies' Christian Union helped young women find positions, a task later assumed by the YWCA. The severe depression of the 1890s brought another wave of helpful agencies. A division of the newly formed Civic Federation of Chicago, the Central Relief Association opened a "free employment bureau" in February 1894. In less than a month it had more than 2,000 workers on its books. But unions complained that the registry was really only an information file that allowed employers to avoid hiring known union activists. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Woman's Alliance, and various women's clubs provided more successful referral services. Settlement houses, following the lead of

Yesterdays City

The )',\1CA provided reading rooms-alternallves to saloons-where unemployed mm could relax without being obliged to buy liquor. CHS, ICH ,-21044.

Hull House, also opened employment bureaus, but their impact seems to have been localized and limited by their frequent connections to labor union organizing activities. The power of government was the final route of redre against employment scams. While local licensing and policing had proved ineffective, there was still hope in tate legislation. An 1879 law gave workers a lien on a railway for six month ' wage ifa labor contractor defaulted on his obligation . Reformers had great hopes for a state-run employment service, an idea first implemented in 1890 in Ohio. The correcti\Âˇe features of the plan were obvious. The exploitive profit incenti\Âˇe was gone, as was any tendency to support or undermine organized unions. Both the prospective employer and employee could benefit from the large pool ofapplicants and jobs that su ch a program would likely generate. ~lost important, the success of the state employment bureau was expected to drive the dishonest private agencies out of business. Opposition to the state plan was vocal and well organized. Some charged that it would create "socialistic" competition with private enterprises; others objected to the cost of operating offices. But the call for a state-run agency became louder

through the 1890s, especially after the Chicago City Council inexplicably repealed the city licen ing ordinance in 1896. All agencies in the city were left suddenly without any regulation, and officials did not even know how many existed. With the gradual move against the toleration of organized vice and the growing war on white slave trade that began at the decade's end, the Illinoi General Assembly passed a free employment agency act in 1899. The new law seemed almost utopian to its backers. Three offices would be established in Chicago, all free , nonpolitical, and carefully run to match applicants with employers. The offices also took out newspaper ads listing the skills of their applicants. A major component of the act prohibited businesses whose laborers were on strike acces to employment files. Finally, the new law placed private agencies under state licensing, charging a $200 annual fee and demanding a $1,000 pei-formance bond. Proponents, includingjane Addams, applauded the new law. During its first full year of operation, the system successfully filled 31,218 of 37,285 applications for employment. But optimism soon turned into frustration. Although the licensing provision survived a court challenge 71

Chicago History, Spring 1989

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Brothels continued to exploit naive yiung women despite strict rejo,m laws passed in 1909. From The White Slave Hell, CHS Library.

from the private agencies, the failure to specify regulations (violation of which might bring revocation) and the lack of funding for enforcement meant that a major section of the bill was useless. Probably less than half of the private firms even bothered to take out the licenses. A court cha llenge in 1903 effectively destroyed the entire law when the Illinois Supreme Court decided that the free offices had no right to deny the owners of businesses closed by strikes access to applicant files . Within days of the 1903 court decision, the General Assembly passed a new act. Once more the state licensed the private offices, this time citing criteria for their operation. They established a maximum application fee that could be charged to jobseekers that had to be refunded

if no pos1t1on had been found within thirty days. All agencies (except charities, which were specifically excluded from the definition of "private" employment office) also had to retain records, which were open to state inspection. The increasing concern with the safety of young working women was addressed in the provision prohibiting any referrals to immoral resorts. The free offices established under the 1899 act were retained. Even this new law proved a failure, largely because of imprecise definitions of key terms. In a detailed investigation called "The Chicago EmploymentAgency and the Immigrant Worker," social welfare expert Grace Abbott of the League for the Protection of Immigrants described abuses that had changed little from earlier decades. Innocent, trusting workers were overcharged application fees and dispatched to nonexistent jobs by private agencies that failed to keep records and often operated without proper licenses. Clearly immigrant workers made little use of the free employment service, in part because private agencies seemed more successful in placing them, and also because neighborhood job brokers spoke in their native tongues. Employers were often able to find groups of laborers through private agencies for bargain wage . Meanwhile, those who held the status of skilled laborer regarded the state offices as little more than charity services. Instead of reducing the influence of private employment offices, the number of agencies actually increased to 289, of which ll0 concentrated on immigrants. Finally, in 1909, Grace Abbott, along with representatives of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics and the legitimate private employment agencies, drafted a new measure to regulate for-profit job bureaus. Its provisions closed the loopholes opened by imprecise definitions and covered in detail every aspect of the business, prompting the chief inspector of employment offices to commend the law for bringing "a wonderful change in the conduct of these concerns." Abuses still existed, perhaps inevitably in Chicago's turbulent labor market that provided more than 250,000 foreign-born workers to build America's rail system. Some agencies still recruited inmates for brothels. But despite these continuing problems, the law decreased abuses, and violations declined further with the passing years.

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