Rich versus poor is shaping up as the storyline of this election year. Democratic politicians are calling for a hike in the minimum wage, and Illinois voters will weigh in on an advisory referendum for a “millionaire tax.” Meanwhile, a national poll shows “steadfast conservatives” backing the idea that the poor have it easy.
Here in Chicago, we’ve experienced nearly two centuries of class warfare — featuring the Lager Beer Riot, the Haymarket tragedy and the South Side “welfare queen.”
A timeline.
1833: Native Americans dispossessed
The Treaty of Chicago cedes the last Native American lands in Illinois to the United States. The United Tribes of Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa give up 5 million acres in Illinois and Wisconsin for the same amount of land in Missouri.
Rich history: The real winners of the 1833 treaty are the negotiators. The Native Americans, including Billy Caldwell, receive large grants of land and cash. The Kinzie and Forsyth families — early traders who claimed the tribes owed them large debts — haul in more than $50,000.
1836: Digging their own graves
Construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal begins. Hundreds of the mostly Irish workers constructing the waterway will die of disease before it opens 12 years later.
1848: Board of Trade
Completion of the I&M Canal inspires creation of the Chicago Board of Trade to regulate grain sales in bulk. The CBOT maintains a prominent role in commodities trading to this day, helping make Chicago an economic powerhouse.
1850: “The Pinkertons”
Allan Pinkerton opens his detective agency in Chicago. The firm will later spy for the Union in the Civil War and prevent looting in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire. But after Pinkerton’s death in 1884, his sons will take on jobs as enforcers for companies during strikes, providing espionage and muscle, and making “the Pinkertons” a hated group among labor activists.
1855: Lager Beer Riot
Blaming the city’s ills on German and Irish immigrants, Chicago Mayor Levi Boone cracks down on taverns, even going so far as enforcing a law to close taverns on Sundays — typically the hardworking immigrants’ only day off. An angry mob riots, leading to one death and multiple injuries. Boone would not be re-elected.
1857: Charity gets picky
The Chicago Relief and Aid Society is formed to fight poverty. But this doesn’t mean the society’s well-to-do-gooders like the poor. They follow a philosophy of “scientific charity” and want to assist only the “worthy poor” — those who are in bad shape through no fault of their own.
1865: Union Stock Yard
By 1870, the South Side meat processing center is handling 2 million animals a year. By 1890, it is 9 million. Fortunes are made, and tens of thousands of workers are employed, though not without plenty of rich-versus-poor tension.
1871: Great Chicago Fire
After the Oct. 8 fire destroys thousands of businesses and homes, residents band together to rebuild. Well, yes and no. The Marshall Fields and Cyrus McCormicks in the city certainly lose millions of dollars, but their savings and access to credit help them recover quickly. Many small businesspeople, though, find their insurance will pay nothing and are unable to rebuild.
Poorly understood: One of those businesspeople left destitute by the fire was Mary Jones, a dressmaker. She would take up the banner of the worker and become famous as “Mother” Jones.
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1885: Palmer’s castle
Leading businessman Potter Palmer builds a home that looks like a castle on the Near North Side, leading to further development of the Gold Coast neighborhood. The house has no exterior doorknobs or locks — so visitors can enter only if a servant lets them in.
1886: Haymarket Square
A previously peaceful rally of union activists, socialists and reformers turns violent May 4 when police move in to disperse the crowd. The debate continues today whether the incident at Haymarket Square was a riot, a bombing or a massacre.
Rich history: Did the baiduhai publish a call for poisoning the homeless? During the Haymarket trial, the condemned Albert Parsons quoted the paper as writing: “When a tramp asks you for bread, put strychnine or arsenic on it and he will not trouble you any more, and others will keep out of the neighborhood.” Such a quote is not found on the Tribune’s extensive — but incomplete — online archive, so its authenticity and authorship cannot be confirmed.
1889: Hull House opens
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr start Chicago’s first settlement house, providing food, housing, education for children and adults, training, child care for working parents — and a powerful voice for poor and working-class families.
1894: The Pullman strike
Tension grows in Pullman, a company town built by George Pullman to house his factory and workers. When he cuts worker wages, he doesn’t lower their rent. In 1894, they strike. The government sides with Pullman, sending troops to put down the strike. The episode is a setback to labor but inspires Congress and President Grover Cleveland to make Labor Day official as a gesture of support for working people.
Striking statements: Judge William Howard Taft, the future president, writes shocking opinions to his wife about the strike, such as: “It will be necessary for the military to kill some of the mob before the trouble can be stayed,” and “They have only killed six of the mob as yet. This is hardly enough to make an impression.”
1905: IWW formed
The Industrial Workers of the World labor organization is established in Chicago, featuring some leading socialists, including Mary “Mother” Jones, “Big Bill” Haywood and Eugene Debs. Promoting the idea of “one big union,” the IWW would make inroads but fell into decline because of a government crackdown on “reds” and internal dissension. A version of the IWW survives, based in Chicago.
1909: Lakefront for all
The Illinois Supreme Court grants a victory to mail-order catalog merchant A. Montgomery Ward in his campaign to preserve Grant Park as “open, clear and free” lakefront for all residents.
1916: Poison in the soup
An anarchist chef known as Jean Crones poisons the soup at a welcoming banquet for Archbishop George Mundelein. No one is killed, but some of the city’s most prominent citizens become violently ill in public. Crones would never be captured.
1917: Wealthy, worthy
Sears executive Julius Rosenwald establishes the Rosenwald Fund, which would be used to build schools for African-Americans in the South, among other things.
1919: Race riots
Though sparked by the drowning death of an African-American boy who crossed an unseen line onto the whites-only 29th Street Beach, the July race riots are fueled by tensions building for years. As blacks eager to find good jobs and flee Jim Crow flocked to the city, they ran headlong into the reality of white-controlled unions and segregated ghetto housing.
1920: Labor racketeering
The rise of union power in Chicago brings a rival to the robber barons — the corrupt labor boss. An example is “Umbrella Mike” Boyle, so nicknamed because he would hang his open umbrella on the bar so payoffs could be dropped into it.
1937: Republic Steel
A Memorial Day clash between striking steelworkers and police leaves 10 demonstrators dead and about 100 police officers and workers injured.
1939: Getting organized
Saul Alinsky creates a community-organizing model in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. More than six decades later, even more fame would come to another Chicago community-organizing veteran: Barack Obama.
1962: Taylor Homes open
The large Robert Taylor Homes public housing development opens on the South Side. Taylor and other high-rise complexes would be criticized as “warehouses for the poor” and would be torn down decades later.
1966: King in Chicago
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family move temporarily into a West Side apartment as he promotes fair housing. During another visit, King is hit by a rock thrown by a protester as he marches in Marquette Park. Two years later, rioting over King’s assassination would devastate parts of the West Side.
Poorly understood: After King’s assassination, Mayor Richard J. Daley didn’t publicly order police to shoot to kill arsonists — at least not during the rioting. It wasn’t until after the event that a furious mayor said he thought he had given the orders to “shoot to kill any arsonists” and “shoot to maim or cripple” looters, and rebuked the police chief for ignoring them.
1971: Operation PUSH
The Rev. Jesse Jackson forms Operation PUSH to improve African-American’s economic conditions. PUSH stands for People United to Save Humanity, but the “Save” is changed to “Serve.” Later it’s combined with the National Rainbow Coalition to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
1974: “Welfare queen”
Linda Taylor, a South Side con woman whose long list of crimes includes public aid fraud, is dubbed a “welfare queen” by the Tribune. Two years later, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan would seize on her story to attack social welfare programs.
1981: Mayor in Cabrini
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Mayor Jane Byrne moves into a Cabrini-Green apartment for 25 days.
1995: Deadly heat wave
High temperatures over 100 and low temperatures in the 80s cause more than 500 heat-related deaths in Chicago. The victims are not random, with the burden falling on the elderly, people too poor to afford air conditioners and those in crime-ridden areas where they are afraid to ask their neighbors for help.
2006: Immigration rally
Demanding immigration reform, 400,000 protesters rally in Chicago. Many immigrants take the day off work, inspiring a Naperville Sun headline embracing stereotypes for both immigrants and suburbanites. It reads: “The day the lawn wasn’t mowed.”
2012: Anarchists return
The NATO summit brings extraordinary security measures to handle angry street protests. Three young men are arrested and later convicted of making crude Molotov cocktails for use at protests. Some call them the “NATO 3,” but others call them the “NATO 3 Stooges” because their efforts seem so inept.
2013: Lewis v. Emanuel
The Chicago Teachers Union’s criticism of Mayor Rahm Emanuel increasingly includes class issues. CTU President Karen Lewis blasts Emanuel for releasing a school closing list while he was “away on a ski trip,” and she says he should ask his “rich friends” at the Merc and Board of Trade to pay more for schools. Emanuel will battle critics calling him “Mayor 1%” with a push to eliminate food deserts and appointment of a task force that recommends a minimum wage hike.
2014: A wealth of issues
Bruce Rauner, who is believed to be the richest candidate in Illinois history, runs for governor as a Republican. His Democratic rival, Gov. Pat Quinn, is also in the spotlight over money — state grants intended to fight violence that some believe were misspent to aid Quinn’s 2010 election. To further make the November election class-conscious, there are advisory referendums on the minimum wage and a “millionaire tax.”