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The Union Fire Proof Ticket |
But Chicago's resurrection was a good deal bumpier than the booster vision
admitted. Among more prosperous citizens, the fire rearranged many lives, wiping out one
person's home and assets while creating new possibilities for others. The situation for the
less well-off was on the whole more difficult. In mid-January of 1872 an angry group of
demonstrators carrying placards with such slogans as "Leave a Home for the Laborer" and
"Don't Vote Any More for the Poor Man's Oppressor" broke up a meeting of the Common
Council. They were protesting proposed restrictions on flammable building materials as
discriminating against those who could only afford wood. Working people were caught in
other binds, as landlords and employers saw no contradiction in their charging higher rents
because of the housing shortage as they appealed to laborers to hold the line on wages.
Workers who attempted to organize--there was a failed strike by carpenters and a
successful one by bricklayers in the fall of 1872--found themselves deemed enemies of the
common good in the newspapers. The influx of newcomers seeking employment in
rebuilding Chicago worsened the situation for workers by keeping down the price of labor
while raising rents.
There were other hardships and conflicts. The rapid pace of rebuilding, assisted by the innovative use of derricks, led to an extraordinary number of injuries and deaths on the job. To add insult to such injuries, a group of native-born reformers, ever fearful of social disorder, focused on alcohol as the root of all evil. They forced Mayor Medill to enforce an existing ban on Sunday drinking, which Chicagoans of Irish and German extraction correctly took as an attack on the saloons and beer halls in which they socialized. As Chicago politics became more markedly class-driven, Medill resigned his office and left for Paris. In the fall of 1873, Harvey Colvin, the native-born standard-bearer of a new coalition of ethnic voters that called itself the People's Party, was elected over the "reform" candidate.
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Joseph Medill |
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