------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (October 2006)  
  
Georg Leidenberger, _Chicago's Progressive Alliance: Labor and the   
Bid for Public Streetcars_. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University   
Press, 2006. vii + 202 pp. $35 (cloth), ISBN: 0-87580-356-3.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by David J. St. Clair, Department of Economics,   
California State University, East Bay.  
  
  
Georg Leidenberger seeks to redefine the role of Chicago labor unions   
in the city's Progressive Movement at the turn of the twentieth   
century. Union membership in Chicago surged from one hundred thousand   
in 1900 to three hundred thousand in 1903. Membership growth   
coincided with unprecedented labor solidarity and public support. In   
addition, labor expanded its agenda beyond narrow work-related issues   
to include broader social issues of city corruption and municipal   
reform. Labor created alliances and coalitions with middle class   
reform groups and became a driving force in the reform movement.  
  
Leidenberger credits two new Chicago service unions with labor's   
success: the teamsters and the public school teachers union. The   
rapid growth of membership and inter-trade labor solidarity was   
largely the work of the teamsters and their ability to use sympathy   
strikes to promote the unionization of less powerful workers. On the   
other hand, the teachers union and the Chicago Federation of Labor   
were instrumental in expanding labor's agenda and hegemony and in   
breaking down the barriers to building coalitions with other   
progressive interests.  
  
Leidenberger admits to feeling "nostalgia" for the day when labor   
unions assumed center stage in municipal reform politics and he seeks   
to understand the reasons for this earlier success (p. 4). While his   
nostalgia extends to sympathy for the sympathy strike (yes, the pun   
is intended), one need not be similarly disposed to benefit from this   
book. Whether you rejoice or recoil at the sympathy strike,   
Leidenberger draws on archival data to effectively document labor's   
use of the tactic to expand its power and influence.  
  
Leidenberger's primary focus is on labor and its role in politics.   
Transit is essentially a case study for these issues. Transit   
historians will not find any discussion of the history or economics   
of transit per se. This may limit the book, but it does not diminish   
its importance. Scholars have often gazed into the transit mirror and   
seen different reflections: transit as city builder, transit as city   
unifier, transit as competing technology, transit as a business,   
transit as a regulated franchise monopoly, transit as a corruptor of   
urban politics, and transit as a civic political issue.  
  
Leidenberger deals with the political dimension of transit and he   
correctly highlights the crucial issue: franchise monopoly. Indeed,   
it is virtually impossible to understand the economic history of   
transit at this time, or in subsequent periods, without an   
appreciation of this issue. Leidenberger also explores Chicago's   
campaign to resolve the abuses of the franchise monopoly system   
through municipal ownership.  
  
Leidenberger's story is ultimately a tale of coalitions forged, then   
lost. Of labor solidarity and influence gained, then lost. Of strikes   
won, then lost. He seeks to explain both the successes and the   
failures.  
  
An Introductory chapter describes the rapid increase in union   
membership in Chicago in the early twentieth century. Along with San   
Francisco, Chicago became the most unionized city in the country with   
more than fifty percent of its labor force in a union. The   
Introduction also lays out the Leidenberger's major themes, his views   
on "public spaces," and his view of streetcars as important public   
spaces.  
  
Chapter One chronicles the defeat of Chicago's Building Trade Council   
(an organization of the city's traditional building trade unions) at   
the hands of the Building Contractors Council in the Great Lockout of   
1900. Defeat resulted in the elimination of the sympathy strike by   
the city's building trade unions. However, Chicago's labor movement   
was soon transformed by the creation and ascendance of two new   
service unions; the teamsters and the teachers union. The teamsters   
were organized in 1901 and came to prominence in a 1902 city-wide   
teamster strike in sympathy with union recognition for meat packing   
workers. Being a service union at the core of the city's distribution   
network, the teamsters were particularly well positioned to wield the   
sympathy strike weapon and they aggressively employed it to promote   
the unionization of less powerful workers in unrelated trades.   
Success in the 1902 strike brought the teamsters to the vanguard of   
labor organizing and was primarily responsible for the surge in union   
membership and inter-trade labor solidarity in the city.  
  
Chicago public school teachers also formed a union in 1901. This   
service union was nominally white collar, overwhelmingly female, and   
particularly well positioned to articulate labor's views to middle   
class reform interests. The teachers union and the Chicago Federation   
of Labor (CFL) promoted labor solidarity and were able to articulate   
a labor agenda that transcended narrow job-related issues. Labor's   
expanded agenda included issues of city reform and the teachers union   
and the CFL aggressively reached out to establish coalitions with   
middle class reform groups to secure a prominent place in the broader   
progressive movement.  
  
Chapters Two and Three discuss the role of streetcars in city   
politics and reform. Leidenberger characterizes public transit as the   
"central political question in turn-of-the-century Chicago" (p. 44).   
Streetcar companies figured so prominently in city politics and   
reform movements because they were widely perceived as abusive   
monopolies responsible for unsafe transit, corruption, tax evasion   
and abusive labor practices. At the core of the problem was the   
monopoly franchise system that granted private owners a monopoly over   
a vital urban utility. Rent seeking and corruption became the norm in   
Chicago and across the nation. Chapter Three chronicles the efforts   
of teachers to promote municipal ownership of streetcars as the   
solution to the transit problem and municipal reform. These efforts   
were bolstered by a strike by transit workers in 1904. The successful   
strike garnered broad public support and thrust labor to the fore in   
the campaign to have the city buy out the transit companies. Labor   
thus achieved the status of a full participant in a vital city reform   
issue.  
  
Chapter Four describes the ill-fated teamster strike of 1905. The   
strike began in April with the teamsters striking the Montgomery Ward   
department store in sympathy with Montgomery Ward garment workers.   
However, an aggressive response from the newly-formed Chicago   
Employers Association escalated the conflict into a city-wide affair.   
Leidenberger attributes the strike and especially the escalation to   
an aggressive attempt by employers to crush union power. To this end,   
Leidenberger asserts that Chicago's 62-mile network of underground   
tunnels was developed to break the teamsters' hold on the city's   
streets. Historians have usually viewed the tunnels, begun shortly   
before the 1905 strike, as an innovative solution to moving goods in   
and out of the congested central business district. Leidenberger's   
assertion is a provocative departure from this view.  
  
Strike violence, police intervention, and contentious accusations   
polarized public opinion and broke the union's support from middle   
class progressives. The motives of teamster leaders were challenged   
by accusations of rampant corruption, charges that Leidenberger   
claims were responsible for discrediting the teamsters "for   
generations to come" (p. 110). In the end, the teamsters lost the   
strike and were forced to abandon the sympathy strike.  
  
Chapter Five describes the failure of the municipal ownership   
campaign. With support for labor shattered by the violence of the   
teamsters strike and a daunting list of hurdles to municipal   
ownership posed by the courts, vacillating politicians, and   
"functionalist" views of regulation, the municipal-ownership   
candidate lost the race for mayor in 1907. In addition, the   
referendum on municipal ownership on the 1907 ballot was also   
defeated.  
  
Chapter Six and a Conclusion trace the legacy of labor's failed foray   
into progressive politics in Chicago. Leidenberger argues that with   
labor's political defeat and the defeat of a unified plan for the   
city's transit needs, Chicago became a politically and physically   
fragmented city. Fragmentation ultimately paved the way for the rise   
of the political machine and the automobile (initially, the only   
non-political transit mode).  
  
For all of its strengths, the book is not without weaknesses:  
  
1. Nostalgia aside, Leidenberger's advocacy sometimes clouds his   
objectivity. He invariably portrays labor's position and struggles as   
progressive and democratic while the actions and positions of   
employers and labor's opponents are always driven by baser motives.   
Likewise, Leidenberger seems to see "democracy" as a favorable (to   
him) outcome rather than a process. One is left wondering why the   
defeat of municipal ownership at the polls is not a democratic   
outcome.  
  
2. Some important assertions are either not adequately supported or   
not developed. For example, anyone familiar with Teamster Presidents   
Beck and Hoffa will find Leidenberger's claim that the union's   
reputation for corruption stemmed solely or even primarily from the   
1905 strike less than convincing. Likewise, Leidenberger fails to   
develop or support his assertion that Chicago's 62-mile network of   
underground tunnels was developed in order to break the teamsters'   
hold on the city's streets. While Leidenberger cites contemporary   
statements that make it clear that some envisioned the tunnels for   
this purpose, he does not delve into the claims or consider   
alternative motives. Nor does he show how the tunnels were used to   
break the 1905 strike or subsequent labor disputes. Unfortunately,   
his assertion remains a provocative, but unproven, claim.  
  
3. A related problem arises in his analysis of the municipal   
ownership issue. While Leidenberger ties labor's interests in transit   
politics exclusively to municipal ownership, he does not explain why   
anything short of city ownership was so unsatisfactory to labor. Did   
labor have no interest at all in any type of streetcar regulation   
short of municipal ownership? Why was municipal ownership such an   
all-or-nothing position for labor?  
  
4. The reader will be left wondering what happened to the teachers   
union. After figuring so prominently in the initial discussion of   
labor's new role in progressive politics, the teachers union seems to   
just fade away. Leidenberger describes the demise of teamster power   
in the violence of the 1905 strike, but his treatment of the teachers   
union is anti-climactic at best. A half-paragraph on p. 146 tersely   
relates the hostility of the political machine to the teachers union   
and the outlawing of teachers unions in 1915-17.  
  
These shortcomings aside, Leidenberger provides an interesting,   
provocative, and readable analysis of labor's role in the Progressive   
Movement. The strength of his work is in documenting labor's active   
participation in reform issues that went beyond job-related concerns.   
Histories of the progressive era have often treated labor as an   
issue; Leidenberger effectively adds labor to the cast of players in   
urban reform and his book deserves the attention of anyone interested   
in understanding the Progressive Era.  
  
Georg Leidenberger is Professor of History at Universidad Autonoma   
Metropolitana in Mexico City, Mexico.  
  
  
David J. St. Clair is Professor of Economics at California State   
University, East Bay. He is the author of _The Motorization of   
American Cities_ and is currently doing research in the history of   
transit in Los Angeles and nineteenth-century California economic   
history.  
  
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Published by EH.Net (October 2006). All EH.Net reviews are archived   
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