Books

Cultural history:
The imaginative dimension of disorder
in 19th century Chicago

By BERNARD J. BROMMEL

Carl Smith. Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Hay market Bomb and the Model Town of Pullman. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pp. 395 with illustrations, notes and index. $35 (cloth).

Last year, the Illinois Historical Society, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and other labor groups commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Pullman strike. A new book by Carl Smith, professor of English and American culture at Northwestern University, provides important insights into this famous strike, as well as two earlier events in Chicago history: the fire in 1871 and the Hay market bombing in 1886. Smith skillfully traces the conditions surrounding these events by examining related materials that appeared in newspapers, magazines, speeches and literary works before, during and after each crisis.

He goes beyond providing a typical history of these incidents by helping his readers understand what he calls the "imaginative dimensions" of each "disorder." To establish what he means by dimensions, he develops the contexts of these historical events by analyzing the intellectual and literary responses to them. He states that each event assumed a "powerful narrative form made up of an engrossing interplay of incident and character that was subject to multiple interpretations." He maintains that out of these varied accounts, people in Chicago and throughout the nation formed impressions, both positive and negative, of these urban disorders and came to fear or accept urban progress that brought with it disruptions and disasters. Through this approach Smith illuminates "the shape of belief that resulted from Chicago's experiences.

The book, divided into three parts, covers in adequate detail the facts about each of these "disorders." Then the author moves on to analyze an impressive variety of commentary from poetry, novels, newspaper articles, pamphlets and speeches, recreating the images Americans had of these disasters during and after the period between 1871 and 1894.

In part one on the great conflagration, Smith presents newspaper reporters' firsthand accounts of men and women who survived the fire, along with later fictional accounts, such as the novels Spicy and Barriers Burned Away. In these novels, characters of disparate social backgrounds find love among the ruins of the city, proving that, romantically at least, class distinctions were not as important in the aftermath of the fire. Smith also cites poems by John Greenleaf Whittier and Bret Harte to reflect other dimensions of ways people interpreted the fire. Whittier, for example, took a religious approach to the fire, viewing it as a redemption from the sin of greed and as a victory for Christ's "gospel of humanity."

In the other two sections of the book, Smith draws even closer parallels between literature and historical events. Both social disorders, the bomb and the strike, dealt with labor unrest and the growing division in this country between management and workers. To his credit, Smith links the aftermath reactions of the fire to the escalating tensions before the Haymarket tragedy.

In covering both the Haymarket bombing and the Pullman strike. Smith objectively presents both management and worker-union points of view. This does not prevent him from showing how Marshall Field and George Pullman used their economic power and political connections to manipulate some of the outcomes in history. Smith achieves overall balance by the judicious use of excerpts from contrasting and, at times, competing sources: the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Mail or Chicago Daily Inter-ocean; Harper's Weekly or Century Magazine. He also used effectively quotes from radical leaders Lucy and Albert Parson, writing in Alarm, and August Spies and Samuel Fielden's writings in Arbeiter Zeitung. Smith finds further evidence for his conclusions in the writings of Edward Bellamy, Charles Reade, William Carwardine, Laurence Gronlund and Henry Demarist Lloyd.

In all three urban disorders, Smith clearly delineates the dialectical tensions that developed between the "haves" and the "have-nots" during this important quarter century when both the city and its corporations experienced rapid growth. Even in the aftermath of the fire, the struggle between the wealthy and the working poor was evident.

His approach to looking at history could be applied to larger events and time periods, such as the Vietnam War or perhaps the AIDS crisis. On a smaller scale, Smith has demonstrated this with his 1984 essay on the "San Francisco Earthquake and Fire" that appeared in the Yale Review.

Reading his book at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing caused me to consider how we currently assimilate our beliefs about urban tragedy. In 1995 the struggle between capital and labor continues to express the conflict between those who make it in our society and those who do not. The downsizing of corporations, the part-timing of jobs, the absence of adequate health care for many and the increasing number of the homeless may replicate a social environment that makes the fire, the bomb and the strike of Chicago's last century more comprehensible and relevant to Illinoisans today.

Bernard J. Brommel, professor of speech communication at Northeastern Illinois University, is the author of Eugene V. Debs: Spokesman for Labor and Socialism, which won the "Best Biography" award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1978.

36/September 1995/Illinois Issues