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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
The Pullman Strike of 1894 was a cataclysmic event for the nation. During its violent course, the print media provided an interpretive frame that portrayed the strike in large measure as an immigrant-inspired attack on American laws and democratic customs. Often characterizing the strikers as “foreigners” in the thrall of anarchist ideologies and a tyrannous labor chieftain, journalists painted a stark picture indeed. Employing framing theory, Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and recent insights on the ethnic quality of nationalism, this essay argues that newspapers and other major print periodicals significantly contributed to the formation of nationalist attitudes at a time when many Americans were deeply worried over the direction in which the country was headed.
1 Remington, Frederic, “Chicago under the Mob,” “Chicago under the Law,” and “The Withdrawal of U.S. Troops,” in Harper's Weekly, July 21, 28, Aug. 11, 1894Google Scholar. The author thanks Joyce Appleby, Graham Cassano, Allesandro Duranti, Naomi Lamoreaux, and John Laslett for their help and support.
2 , Remington, “Chicago under the Law.”Google ScholarOn Remington's views of immigrants and minorities, seeMcCullough, David, “Remington—The Man” in Shapiro, Michael Edward and Hassrick's, Peter H.Frederic Remington: The Masterworks (New York, 1991), 28–29Google Scholar. Remington's literary techniques in regard to the Pullman Strike are explored inBuckland, Roscoe L., Frederic Remington: The Writer (New York, 2000), 74–75Google Scholar; andVorpahl, Ben Merchant, Frederic Remington and the West: With the Eye of the Mind (Austin, 1978), 171Google Scholar. See alsoNemerov, Alexander, Frederic Remington and Turn-ofthe-Century America (New Haven, 1995), 112–13Google Scholar.
3 A number of histories deal with the Pullman Strike:Iindsey, Almont, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval, (1942; repr. Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar;Papke, David Ray, The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America (Lawrence, KS, 1999)Google Scholar;Manning, Thomas, The Chicago Strike of 1894: Industrial Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York, 1960)Google Scholar;Smith, Carl, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar.
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24 Importantly, they did not all agree on which groups were most dangerous. Rather, the culprit was often the nebulous “foreigners.”
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26 , Papke, Puilman CaseGoogle Scholar, ch. 1. It must be noted that Pullman was not alone in his hope for his city. As Carl Smith notes, “Virtually all of the early commentary on the town by outsiders made, if anything, even greater claims for Pullman's achievement than he himself did.”, Smith, Urban Disorder, 184Google Scholar.
27 Notably, Pullman also hired African Americans as porters., Papke, Pullman Case, 12Google Scholar. Pullman sought to transform the workers themselves, to “bring out the highest and best there is in them,” according to a celebratory corporate history. Quoted from [Doty?] The Story of Pullman in , Smith, Urban Disorder, 195Google Scholar.
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49 Washington Post, July 6, 1894.Google Scholar
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56 Washington Post, July 14, 1894Google Scholar. Citing “complications” around the “present crisis” that were “so grave in nature that we cannot advise a course which would but add to the general confusion,” the AFL declined to join the strike.
57 The pro-labor Chicago Times recognized the antiunion slant of most coverage in a bluntly titled article,“Lies Are Too Numerous,” July 3, 1894Google Scholar. In response to the union boycott of the press, the New Orleans Picayune quipped on July 7, 1894Google Scholar, that the papers should “boycott” strike coverage, because “these things cannot live without publicity.”
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65 Ascribing influence to these periodicals is based on the centrality of text in the nineteenth century. This was a nation of readers, and newspapers provided a vital link to national affairs. Since the Civil War, newspaper readership had expanded greatly as illiteracy rates plummeted. In the last three decades of the century, circulation totals for daily publications had risen from 4,000 to over 12,000. During the strike, the press sold even more papers. The Chicago Times, for instance, gained 16,032 new readers in week one of the strike and would gain many more by strike's end. On the growth and influence of the press, see Emery, Michael, Emery, Edwin, and Roberts, Nancy L., The Press in America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 9th ed. (Boston, 2000), 157Google Scholar.
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