Class and Politics during the Depression of the 1870s

This chapter looks at Chicago's working class during the 1873 depression, during which all major industries experienced steep declines in revenues, and perhaps a third of the nation's workers lost their jobs. With the start of the 1873 depression, it quickly became apparent that the city's unskilled, largely immigrant working class could not be ignored. Distinctly different from the crowds during the eight-hour strike in 1867, the marches of the unemployed in December 1873 marked a new era in the history of Chicago's working class. Indeed, the December 1873 marches helped push the city's upper class into new self-awareness and political action, while crystallizing divisions between Anglo Americans and central Europeans in the Chicago labor movement.