The Ordeal of the Jungle: Race and the Chicago Federation of Labor, 1903–1922

Description

Between 1910 and 1920, the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) inaugurated a massive organizing drive in the city’s meatpacking and steel industries. Although the CFL sought legitimately progressive goals, worked earnestly to organize an interracial union, and made major inroads among both black and white workers, their efforts resulted in a bitter defeat. David Bates provides a clear picture of how even the most progressive of intentions can be ground to a halt. By organizing workers into neighborhood locals, which connected workplace struggles to ethnic and religious identities, the CFL facilitated a surge in the organization’s membership, particularly among African American workers, and afforded the federation the opportunity to aggressively confront employers. The CFL’s innovative structure, however, was ultimately its demise. Linking union locals to neighborhoods proved to be a form of de facto segregation. Over time union structures, rank-and-file conflicts, and employer resistance combined to turn the union’s hopeful calls for solidarity into animosity and estrangement. Tensions were exacerbated by violent shop floor confrontations and exploded in the bloody 1919 Chicago Race Riot. By the early 1920s, the CFL had collapsed. The Ordeal of the Jungle explores the choices of a variety of people while showing a complex, overarching interplay of black and white workers and their employers. In addition to analyzing union structures and on-the-ground relations between workers, Bates synthesizes and challenges previous scholarship on interracial organizing to explain the failure of progressive unionism in Chicago. Review “The Ordeal of the Jungle is a timely contribution to the ongoing conversation between the past and the present not only in the fields of labor and African American history but also in movements for the advancement of working people and people of color.”—Peter Rachleff, author of Black Labor in Richmond, 1865–1890 “In this absorbing study, David Bates charts the spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall of the Chicago Federation of Labor’s World War I – era campaign to organize the city’s stockyards across lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and skill.”—Paul Michel Taillon, author of Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877–1917 “ The Ordeal of the Jungle deftly blends perspectives of union leaders, rank-and-file workers, strikebreakers, and employers to show how aspects of class and race determined the fate of ambitious organizing drives in Chicago’s stockyards and steel mills. Bates’s methodology and nuanced interpretation exemplify the promise of a new generation of labor historians.”—Michael K. Rosenow, author of Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865 –1920 “Bates offers a vivid account of the Chicago labor movement’s failed attempts to promote a progressive brand of interracial unionism early in the twentieth century. Through a masterful synthesis of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ labor histories, Bates illuminates how employer predation, union miscues, and rank-and-file conflict worked together to undercut solidarity and with it hopes of racial change and economic justice. A vital retelling with important lessons for both historians and labor organizers.”—Kerry Pimblott, author of Faith in Black Power: Race, Religion, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois About the Author David Bates is an assistant professor of history at Concordia University Chicago. He is a regular contributor to the Illinois Reading Council Journal and has also contributed to the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and The Encyclopedia of American Reform Movements. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Race and American Labor History 1. “A Deep, Dark Plot”: Race in the Chicago Labor Movement, 1894–1905 2. “Every Negro Can Make a Fight”: Race and the CFL Campaign, 1916–1921 3. “Demoralized by Its Own Weaknesses”: The Structural Limits of Federated Unionism, 1916–1921 4. “Between Two Fires”: White and Black Workers Confront Interracial Unionism, 1916–1921 5. “Patience Is No Longer a Virtue”: The CFL and the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 6. “Boring from Within”: Race and the Decline of the CFL, 1919–1922 Conclusion: The Past, Present, and Future of Interracial Unionism Notes Bibliography Index About the Author Back Cover