Chicago May Days Considered the Day After the 2017 May Day

The Resistance - 1904: Chicago Strikers wait for scabs being brought in by the Progressive Chicago Civic Leadership.  These five are concerned for the lives of their families, because scabs are being flooded into Chicago by Armor, Swift, Cudahy and other members of the Packingtown syndicate.

The Resistance - 2017: Chicago activists are concerned, really, really, really concerned that Trumpism is hurting their feelings - Big time.


I taught on May Day this year.  I am proud of American labor. American labor created the American standard of living that flourished in the nation from the end of WWII until rise of Progressive ( Marxist) dominance of the Democratic Party.  The GOP has never made sense of working people and still tends to despise working men and women, as much as Elizabeth Warren and the New York Times.

The GOP continues to blow off its own toes and GOP Mavericks play to the very news media that detests them and the American Middle Class.  Planned Parenthood survived on Republican largess, until lace-curtain Catholics no longer wanted to be perceived as Archie Bunker.  Who happened to be a Protestant, by the way.

College educated sons and daughters who went to De Paul and Loyola  no longer wanted to be traditional Catholics tied to the old country.  They became Tom Hynes and Neil Hartigan Democrats, who later evolved into Dick Durbin milksops. " Yeah, I am personally against abortion, but I will take money from Planned Parenthood and fight to keep the slaughter of babies a Woman's Health Initiative!"

If you are OK with killing a child in womb, you are OK with any other mischief, it seems to me.

Blue collar Catholics found that they had much more in common with black, white and Latino tradesmen, than their starched collar Brooks Brothers bedecked Progressive-owned union leadership and voted for Reagan and then Trump.

Catholics are as thoroughly Balkanized as the rest of the country.  Country Music plays left and right, as much as buying chicken or coffee,  How did this happen?  Slowly and patiently.  Reds were run out of labor in the 1940's with the exception of textile trades.  The textile trades opened banks - Amalgamated banks out of New York. These banks funded activism in the arts and the sciences, as well as direct action causes.

Marxist activism is now what passes for American values these days.  The Orwellian hate speech crafted by 501(c) 3 foundations and universities has created a Balkan America divided by the very grassroots special interest, identity and agenda shouters being coalesced by foundation cockroaches like Gara LaMarche,

It begins with Philanthropic Foundations controlled by Marxists.  Money is the grease of politics and the engine for 'social change' - the elimination of the American Middle Class.

Labor needs money too.  And labor is coalesced along with immigrants, people unclear of their personal identities, foreign terrorists, lovers of abortion, the Beaux Arts, Hollywood, Broadway, the Media, Wall Street and the Ivy Towers - people who hate the idea of being accused of being bourgeoisie middle class - hillbilly chic American.

Yesterday, every carbon foot-print was set to hit the pavement, but here in Chicago it was forty degrees with winds gusting up to 40 MPH and rain.

The crowds were way down from the expected Pussy Hat numbers of January's Resistance.  we know this because neither Chicago daily paper crowed about the throngs and the media uses helicopters.

 Not so throng.

May Day is a Communist Holiday called International Day in Europe.  May Day says little about American labor anymore.

It says plenty about the dark forces of fascism behind Blue Statism.


Real labor showed up in throngs despite cops billy clubs used to protect scabs -

Real Labor resisted, because there were consequences in life -

People died creating the American Middle Class.

People want no consequences for murdering the Middle Class

Cook County Forest Preserves - Our Greatest Natural Asset for Education, Pleasure and Recreation

 

To acquire … and hold lands … containing one or more natural forests or lands connecting such forests or parts thereof, for the purpose of protecting and preserving the flora, fauna and scenic beauties within such district, and to restore, restock, protect, and preserve the natural forests and said lands together with their flora and fauna, as nearly as may be, in their natural state and condition, for the purpose of the education, pleasure, and recreation of the public.  Cook County Commissioners 1905

1904 had been a tough year for Chicagoans, especially south siders -  Chicago lost the Summer Olympics to St. Louis and the Streetcar and Stockyard Strikes. put many people in financial, physical and even mortal jeopardy - scabs opened fire from rail cars used by the packers to safely transport them to and from the yards and killed several strikers.

Orchestra Hall was completed largely through the subscriptions of the Swift, Armour.  Schwarzschild & Sulzberger packinghouse barons. Very few stockyard workers attended the symphony, I would hazard a guess.

What did working people do and where did they go for relaxation?  What was available to them?  Saloons.  Church.  Union Halls.

The Great Conservationist was in the White House. President Teddy had designated vast tracks of land for the edification, enjoyment and education of the American people.

It seems that in 1905, a few like-minded public servants did the same.

Some brilliant people staked out  68,000 acres of field, wood and water around and within the City of Chicago and gave us the Cook County Forest Preserve District.

This soul tonic of a resource is one of the wonders of living where we do - one wonders if a contemporary public official has the heart and brains to match the vision of the 1905 County Commissioners.

Following the lead of Dr. John Rauch's  Public Parks, City of Chicago (Chicago, 1869), the great sanitarian who fought Yellow Fever and cholera here and beyond Chicago,  some clear headed people put the Forest Preserve into being just after the 1904 strikes and the loss of Olympics.

The 1905 document calling for the creation of a Forest Preserve District was weakly written and it was not until 1911 that the dream came to life.

From that time, the common man, as well as the swell, had his own 'green retreats.' Dan Ryan Woods, Maple Lake, Willow Slough, Joe Louis Golf Course, Brookfield Zoo, Arie Crown Botanic Gardens, Busse Woods, Desplaines River Trail and Camp Dan Beard became places where the grey canyon of La Salle Street, or the red dust of Hegewisch might be forgotten for  a couple of restorative hours.

• Chicago kids could take nature hikes, toboggan, sled, swim, play football, softball and jog.
• Old Timers could take their Kerry Blue, or mixed mutt breed out for a chase of a tennis ball.
• Lovers could neck.
• Families could barbecue, picnic, camp and relax.
• Children at the Nature Stations like Little Red Schoolhouse could learn about the flora and fauna of Cook County
• Teens learned to 'drink responsibly

For one hundred and eleven years, the working stiff and the well-heeled have been afforded a pastoral paradise.

Quality people put this into being.  Let's pray that quality people will preserve the Cook County Forest Preserve District.

All photos of Dan Ryan Woods

On This Day in 1926, Sinclair Lewis Refused the Pulitzer Prize

All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards: they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee. And the Pulitzer Prize for novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented.

Those terms are that the prize shall be given "for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." This phrase, if it means anything whatever, would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment.

The first Pulitzer Prize for the novel went to Ernest Poole, a 1%-er child of privilege, whose Pappy worked with the stockyard packing interests and Jane Addams against the Amalgamated Meatcutters Union in breaking the 1904 and the subesquent 1912 stockyard strikes. Young Ernie, just out of Princeton, was 'made' a free-lance journalist who would 'cover' the strikes.  There is no primary source material indicating Master Poole's prose reportage of too heart-breaking attempts by labor to get a fair shake from the Swifts, the Armours and Cudahys. Jane Addams Hull House flourished, Chicago's  new Orchestra Hall was built and less-connected 'settlement house' operations were funded, once Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey 'persuaded' Meatcutter President Michael Donnelly to end the strike of 1904.  That ended things for the stockyard workers then and there, but Progressive Chicago triumphed.

Ernest Poole wrote his second novel, His Family, which no one reads,  ( well, I did, out of curiosity) and it took the first Pulitzer Prize.  It is a genuine stinker - think Babbitt without any humor, whatsoever.

The Pulitzer Prize has gone to many mediocrities and a few people of actual worth and accomplishment.

Even in 1926, some accomplished folks could tell the difference between Shinola and that other substance.
Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Poole shared some political opinions.  Both saw Socialism as a stay against totalitarianism.  Only Lewis caught on to the fact that socialism was a path to misery. Ernest Poole was an apologist for Stalin way past his due date ( 1937).   Lefties never admit to being wrong; God Bless Them.

Thanks to Sinclair Lewis, who would later accept a Nobel Prize for Literature, someone pointed out the nonsense.

Rose Keefe's "Bate Auto Murder 1904" - The First 'Taken-for-a-Ride Murder' in Crime History

Crime biographer and historian Rose Keefe has just written the account of the first automobile facilitated murder ( Okay, Pal! You're Goin' Fer a Ride) in our history.

In 1904, shortly after the Chicago Stockyard Strikes of that summer, a young man from Racine,Wisconsin, William Bate, who was working in a Chicago hotel, became the first victim of an automobile facilitated murder out in then rural Lemont, Illinois.

Rose Keefe has written a twelve page study of this ground-breaking and fast-getaway murder that you can access by clicking my post title.

From Lulu the instant download publisher:

On November 19, 1904 in Lemont, Illinois, Chicago chauffeur Billy Bate was found slumped behind the wheel of his Toledo touring car. He'd been shot in the head execution-style, making him the first recorded victim of the now-infamous one-way ride. Although the authorities launched a nationwide manhunt for 'Mr. Dove', his last known passenger and probable killer, their efforts were unsuccessful and the Bate Auto Murder remains unsolved. This 12-page ebook includes photos of the victim and the death car. It's a story of big city violence in rural surroundings, and marks a trend that continues to this day.

Rose Keefe and Richard Lindberg of Chicago write the best studies of American Crime in the context of the American Experience. Rose Keefe's The Starker is a magnificent study of Big Jake Zelig the New York Jewish Gangster and Richard Lindberg's Gambler King of Clark Street links the roots of the Chicago Political Machine to Big Mike McDonald.

Rose Keefe CV

Published Books:

Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot Before Al Capone. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2004
The Man Who Got Away: the Bugs Moran Story. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2004
The Starker: Big Jack Zelig, the Becker-Rosenthal Case of 1912, and the Advent of the Jewish Gangster. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2008
Professional Affiliations:

Member, the Writer's Union of Canada
Radio, Television, and Film Appearances:

"Talkline with Zev Brenner", WSNR 620 AM(NY) (November 2008)
"Dave Gordon Radio Show Show", ThatRadio.com (October 2008)
"Our Gotham",www.monk1903.com (June 2008)
"Bulldog and The Rude Awakening Show", WOCM-FM 98.1 (June 2008)
"Mobs In America", Abu Media Ireland (August 2007)
"Man, Moment, and Machine" History Channel televised special (November 2006)
"Young Indiana Jones" DVD Series- consulting expert (July 2006)
"Paddy Whacked": the Irish Mob History Channel televised special (March 2006)
Dave Strauss Radio Show, KTRS St. Louis (February 2006)
The Radio Detective, with Jerry Pearce (March 2004)
WBIG AM with William Kelly (March 2004)
Web and Magazine Articles (author) :

"Max 'Kid Twist' Zweifach - Leader of Monk Eastman Gang ." J*Grit- the Internet Index of Tough Jews, January 2009
"Big Jack Zelig - Lower East Side Gang Leader." J*Grit- the Internet Index of Tough Jews, January 2009
"Rose Rossi- First Victim of the One-Way Ride?" On The Spot Journal, Fall 2008
"The Fighting Parson: Remembering the Reverend Leslie Spracklin, Canada's Elliot Ness." On The Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 5, Winter 2007
"A Buck A Fist: Dopey Benny Fein and New York's Labor Wars". On the Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 3, Spring 2007
"Labor Pain: Mossy Enright and Chicago's Labor Wars". On the Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 2006
"Mary Ward: The First Fatal Automobile Accident". History Magazine, Volume 8, Number 2, December / January 2007
Personal Appearances:

Golden Age of Gangsters Convention, Itasca, Illinois, September 2004
Contributing Author / Expert:

The Most Evil Mobsters in History, by Lauren Carter. Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, London, England, UK 2004
Public Enemies: America's Criminal Past 1919-1940, by Rick Mattix and William J. Helmer. Cumberland House Publishing, (Nashville, TN), 2007
Bad Seeds In The Big Apple, by Pat Downey