Chicago Can Not Have a "Discussion" on Race, Unless It Includes the 1904 Meat Packers Strike

(Meatcutters in Chicago 1904 were proud and skilled workmen and they were causing the Packinghouse owners problems.)

Yet again Chicago is being challenged to another discussion of Race.  This particular discussion should result in a Federally funded lump sum payment to African Americans or a continued discussion of race.

“In the effort to uphold white supremacy at every level down to the neighborhood, Chicago — a city founded by the black fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable — has long been a pioneer. The efforts began in earnest in 1917, when the Chicago Real Estate Board, horrified by the influx of southern blacks, lobbied to zone the entire city by race.”    talented writer quoted in Sun Times Editorial 

I disagree, respectfully - not 1917, Msr. Coates; rather 1904.

No serious discussion of race can or should take place in Chicago without its starting point - the 1904 Stockyard Strike.

Chicago has never recovered from the Meatpackers Strike of 1904. Though engulfed by flames in 1871, Chicago rose from its roots again like an oak forest on steroids. The Pullman Strike, put down by George Custer's replacements, Illinois Yellow-legs and Pinkerton's goons, was as nothing compared to what lay ahead on the tracks.

Chicago's steel tentacles pulled cattle, hogs, sheep and any other hoofed hide that could be tanned, eaten, rendered or husbanded to a vast yard owned by sharp men of business. The amalgamation of tanners, packers, renderers, and shippers had cheap, disorganized and willing pool of people to labor, bleed, and exploit - Czech, Irish, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Westphalian, Belgian, Prussian, Bavarian, Norwegian, and Swedish.

Some of those immigrants had skills as carpenters, millwrights, metal workers, coopers, cart wrights, and teamsters; most had no skills other than brute strength. Today they would be called Caucasian, though very few had passed through The Caucasus to get to America.

On July 12, 1904, a strike was called by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AMC) whose President Michael Donnelly announced the strike.

The causes of the strike ranged from low wages to the excessive pace required while on the job. The strike lasted for nearly two months and included rioting and murder with few periods of peace. The strikers used tactics such as demonstrations and parades while the packers responded by hiring strikebreakers. Although factory conditions were unchanged, the strike had many far reaching effects on the city of Chicago, the union, and the nation as a whole. . . . The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen played a major role in the strike. It was a giant organization and employed both skilled and unskilled workers, a circumstance often resented by skilled workers.(Halpern 32) Though unity was not one of the union's strong points, the union did give workers some sense of it, which was vital when the strike finally began. The main protagonists of the strike were the common laborers, the skilled and unskilled butchers of the Chicago packing plants. The workers, now somewhat organized, demanded higher pay and an end to the relentless "speeding up" of the packing progress. The typical laborer at the time of the strike was foreign, unskilled, worked long, hard hours, and was paid less than twenty cents an hour. The strikers were also very violent which resulted in numerous murders and riots. ("Strikers Firm" 2)

( Bow-tied Frank Curry was Hired by Armour, Swift and the smaller packing interests to bring African Americans to Chicago to break strikes)

(Frank Curry brought hundreds of men and women up from the south into caldron of labor strife - the race card would played later.)


(Chicago Police escorted Curry's strikebreakers ( black men and white men) to the yards) - south of Bridgeport - Irish Canaryville and the Eastern European Back of the the Yards)

The murders and riots were in reaction to the bringing of strikebreakers, mostly African Americans from the South and hired goons* to agitate and incite violence. Chicago Tribune archived articles from the period of the strike - roughly July through September 1904 bear witness to the actions and motives behind those acts.

 The Striking workers lived in and around the Stockyards - their descendants still do.

 Trolleys were hired to take strikebreakers to work

Strikers waited for scabs

Scabs came to Chicago in meat-packing rail cars and they were from all races.


( Strikers and their families starved)


The violence brought home to the heart of readers the intense frustration felt by the strikers and their families and the malice and greed that Chicago's leading families were willing to orchestrate in the name of profit. 8,750 strikebreakers, mostly miserably poor blacks, were lured with promises of a better life in Chicago and train fare to this abattoir of the human heart. Strikers and their families were in fact starving despite the effort of Strike relief Committees and the sympathy for strikers crossed state lines. However, the need to feed the greed was greater than articulating an agreement with the AMC. The owners intended to break this strike and they succeeded.

After a unanimous vote to maintain the strike, AMC President Michael Donnelly announced the strike ended on Sept. 9 1905 - 59 days after the strike was called.  Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey helped to break the strike. That is another antipathy working people of Chicago developed after the 1904 Strike was broken - a complete mistrust and low regard for public reform icons.

The resulting antipathy between multi-cultural,lingual, and religious Caucasians and the strikebreaking African Americans would play out for next one hundred and two years in Chicago. The nature of race relations would always be reduced to the simple 'color of a man's skin' equation by people with the luxury of not being close to the conflict.

The descendants of the strikers would recoil from relations with the people who came North in the hope of a better life. They were shoved into combat with people themselves the victims of exploitation and those who profited by that combat. Those same descendants, one hundred and two years later, continue to be at odds with one another. The strikers descendants moved away as the Black Belt expanded to Berwyn, Cicero, Maywood and the southwest sides - places that since the 1904 strike have been branded as single-mindedly racist, unlike neighborhoods far removed from killing floors on the south side. The Armours and the Swifts and their co-industrialists did well by the strike and became clean with wealth, while the strikers and the strikebreakers were set at odds with one another and continue to be.

The horrific race riots of 1919 were confined to battlefields of Back of the Yards and the Black Belt. The fight for fair housing from the 1940's through the new Millennium mirror that combat zone. Dr. King marched in Marquette Park, where the descendants of the strikers lived and not in Highland Park where the people who prospered by that broken strike. South side white ethnic neighborhoods continue to be referred to as 'racial hotbeds' as recently as last week in the Chicago media. Blacks continue to be pitted against ethnic whites and exploited for political and economic gain.

Maybe, some talk about the causes and consequences of the 1904 Meatpackers Strike should preclude any 'Let's talk Race' challenge. Go and avail yourself of my sources listed below.

Sources: 
  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.All primary sources.

HUNDREDS COME TO BREAK STRIKE
Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963); May 2, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

STRIFE ATTENDS PACKERS' STRIKE.
Chicago; Jul 13, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

RIOTS AT YARDS; SEVEN MEN HURT
Chicago; Jul 18, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)
pg. 1

WORKERS STONED BY MOB OF 5,000.
Chicago Daily; Jul 22, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

STRIKE IS ENDED; MEN SURRENDER.
Chicago; Sep 9, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)  N.B. - read Strike us Ended. very carefully