Scab Ministers, Striking Saints: Christianity and Class Conflict in 1894 Chicago

1. “Pullman Industrial System,” Chicago Record, May 14, 1894.

2. “Chided by a Pastor: Pullman Employees are Criticised by the Reverend Mr. Oggel,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1894.

3. Amongst the other more affluent members were Alexander McLachlan, who owned a construction business responsible for some of the most lucrative building contracts in town; Mrs. Sophia Van Blissengen, whose husband Arthur sat alongside George Pullman on the Pullman Savings Bank's board of directors; the well-known sculptress, Mrs. Ellen Rankin Copp, and her precocious six-year-old son, Hugh Dearborn Copp, already a world-traveling artist himself; Ellis CitationMorris, the vice-president of the Pullman Sound Money Club; Fred Bendle, a banker; and the venerable physician Andrew C. Rankin and his wife, Susan. But most of the church's members worked in the Company's mills, shops, and yards as cabinetmakers, draftsmen, steamfitters, upholsterers, carpenters, and the like. I obtained these results by cross-referencing the “Register of Communicants” on the one hand, and the Chicago city directory for 1894, the United States Census of 1900, and the digitized Chicago Tribune on the other. The church's membership records dating back to its founding in 1882 have been preserved at the Pullman Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL.

4. See “Register of Communicants.” The congregation had numbered 214 on April 1, 1894. This 20% decline was remarkably steep for what had long been a stable congregation, and yet the actual situation was likely gloomier. Indeed, assuming that the attrition rate amongst attendees – a far more transient population to begin with – approached that amongst members, the gross drop in Sunday morning attendance would have significantly more.

5. Once more, I obtained these results by cross-referencing the “Register of Communicants” with the Chicago city directory for 1894 and the United States Census of 1900. It is not possible to identify the occupations of all those who left, as some were not listed and others had very common names.

6. This finding is confirmed not only by the church's records but also by a newspaper report stating that many who stayed were department heads and other high-ranking employees at Pullman. See “Pullman Taken Ill,” Chicago Mail, May 22, 1894. Calvin and Mary Swingle represent an intriguing exception to the rule. Calvin F. Swingle had served as the Chief Engineer at Pullman Works for several years, until his relationship with the Company suddenly terminated in 1894. One surmises that he may have had a falling out with management, which would also explain his disillusionment with this church, though it is impossible to know for certain.

7. Even the local Presbyterian weekly admitted, in a postmortem on the situation, that some members, “imagining the church not to be in sympathy with their attitude, withdrew.” See “Chicago,” Interior 25, no. 1273 (October 18, 1894): 1357. The Interior chalked up some of the losses to people moving away, yet as I make clear below, the vast majority of those who left stayed in close proximity to the church. Perhaps the most plausible alternative explanation for the church's dramatic loss of members, then, is the lack of an immediate full-time replacement for Oggel. However, the short duration of the interim period – a new pastor was installed by autumn – and the church's stability through several other interim periods render this a weaker theory.

8. See “The Big Strike,” Advertiser, May 19, 1894; and “Pullman Taken Ill”, Chicago Mail, May 22, 1894.

9. See “Register of Communicants.” While E. Myrtle Plant and Annie Masterbrook may have joined other churches, they are listed as moving on only to Valparaiso, IN, and Roseland, IL, respectively.

10. Gutman wrote in a path-breaking essay, “the many functions of religion, particularly its effects on the lower classes, cannot be learned by analyzing what leading clergymen said and what social philosophy religious journals professed. Unless one first studies the varieties of working-class community life, the social and economic structure that gave them shape, their voluntary associations (including churches, benevolent and fraternal societies, and trade unions), their connections to the larger community, and their particular and shared values, one is likely to be confused about the relationship between the worker, institutional religion, and religious beliefs and sentiments.” See CitationGutman, “Protestantism and the American Labor Movement,” 77. There have been a number of other investigations into the religion of Gilded Age America's working classes, including for example: CitationVarg, “The Political Ideas of the American Railway Union”; CitationFones-Wolf, Trade Union Gospel; CitationHalker, For Democracy, Workers, and God; CitationNelson, “Revival and Upheaval”; CitationCantor, “Radicalism, Religion, and the American Working Class”; CitationCraig, Religion and Radical Politics, 6–45; CitationWeir, Beyond Labor's Veil, 67–101; CitationMcLeod, Piety and Poverty; Mirola, “Shorter Hours and the Protestant Sabbath”; CitationSterne, “Bringing Religion into Working-Class History”; and Mirola, “Asking for Bread, Receiving a Stone.” Yet these worthwhile studies have not made an impression on general histories of the period. Consider, for example, Jackson CitationLears’ recently published Rebirth of a Nation. While Lears foregrounds religion in a way that few other historians of the period do, he has almost nothing to say about the religion of the working classes outside of a single allusion to the Christian underpinnings of Eugene Debs’ worldview. See Lears, Rebirth of a Nation, 303–4. In addition to being long overlooked, Gutman's clarion call has more recently been subjected to savage critique by Nick CitationSalvatore, a historian of the working classes who is known for taking religion seriously. His criticisms are essentially twofold: (1) Gutman claims to write about “working-class” religion and yet only speaks to a narrow subset of leading Protestant workers. Excluded are ordinary and Catholic workers, as well as emergent Protestants groups with important working-class constituencies, for example the Holiness movement and Pentecostalism. (2) Gutman “privilege[d] those working people he deemed radicals and critics of industrial capitalism, regardless of how ahistorical the ensuing narrative might be.” While Gutman's evidence does not entirely bear the weight of his claims, Salvatore's condescending dismissal of the article – “a heady moment, to be sure, but one that cannot stand even the most cursory examination by one not already baptized in the rhetoric and sentiment of the Thompsonian experience” – does a disservice to the field. As Leon CitationFink wrote in a response to Salvatore, “A more balanced critic … would recognize Gutman's labor history essays … as rich but rough pioneering sketches that fully invited subsequent scholarly refinement and revision.” Indeed, the findings of this essay lend both credence to Gutman's intuitions and urgency to his call for more studies of working-class religion. See Salvatore, “Herbert Gutman's Narrative of the American Working Class,” 64–6; and Fink and Salvatore, “On Nick Salvatore, ‘Herbert Gutman's Narrative of the American Working Class: A Reevaluation’ [with Response],” 664.

11. Religious historians have long been interested in the churches’ response to the deteriorating industrial situation, especially as seen in the rise of social Christianity, the historiography of which is discussed below in notes 13 and 15. However, the extent of class conflict within the churches remains largely invisible within the literature. The most notable exception to this is Fones-Wolf, Trade Union Gospel.

12. This way of phrasing the point emerged out of a fruitful conversation with Janine Giordano Drake, PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

13. This older tendency, the legacy perhaps of the field's Marxist roots, has remained intact even with the rise of the new labor history. The literature on Chicago is ample and representative of this trend. For example, James CitationBarrett's insightful history of Sinclair's “Jungle” cites religion only in passing. Because “each ethnic group established its own church … religion was not a unifying force in Packingtown,” Barrett observes, leaving it at that. See Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle, 73. Lizabeth CitationCohen incorporates religion more substantially than most into her landmark book, Making a New Deal, arguing that Archbishop Mundelein's Americanization campaigns helped to pave the way for increased class solidarity in the 1930s. But Cohen speaks about workers’ religious experience mostly in generalities, with very little attention to the specific content and character of their beliefs and practices. See Cohen, Making a New Deal. Rick CitationHalpern's study of black and white packinghouse workers follows Barrett in citing religion as a source of fragmentation in Packingtown, though he goes beyond the latter in noting when the churches supported or opposed various organizing campaigns. See Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor. Meanwhile, Richard CitationSchneirov's Labor and Urban Politics is perhaps most typical in that it cites the “Protestant axiom” as a “relevant cultural resource” for workers, and yet spends almost no time analyzing the role of religion in shaping local working-class politics. See Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 29. In recent years there have been encouraging signs that some historians of the American working classes have become more interested in religion. As noted above, Nick Salvatore's corpus – including both his acclaimed biography of Debs and his more recent work on the New Deal – takes religion quite seriously. See Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs; and CitationCowie and Salvatore, “The Long Exception.” Also, in the spring of 2009 one of the premier journals in the field, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, devoted an entire issue to articles foregrounding religious issues and institutions. There remains much work to be done at this fruitful intersection, however.

14. Throughout the article I use “elite,” “influential,” “leading,” and comparable adjectives with a very particular set of persons in mind. In the Protestant case, this includes newspaper editors as well as the ministers of prestigious downtown churches. On the Catholic side, “elite” connotes newspaper editors as well as the local hierarchy. Scholars have long located the rise of the Social Gospel in the decades following the Civil War, while noting that its antecedents lay in the antebellum period. See, for example, CitationHopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915; May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America; more recently, CitationPhillips, A Kingdom on Earth; and Smith, The Search for Social Salvation. The literature falls mostly into the category of intellectual history, and with respect to the history of ideas, this periodization makes sense. After all, those years witnessed the emergence of leading figures like Washington Gladden, who penned Working People and their Employers in 1876; Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in 1889; and George Herron, a Christian socialist whose Kingdom Movement peaked in 1894–1895. See Handy, “George D. Herron and the Kingdom Movement,” 109. Yet three sentences buried deep in May's classic monograph should still give historians pause. “By 1895 the doctrines of conservative and progressive social Christianity had been set forth in a large number of books and articles,” he began. “It is, however, difficult to estimate the effect of these new teachings on the large, solid homogenous mass of American Protestant opinion. Had they really displaced the frank, uncompromising, moralistic conservatism that had been nearly the unanimous creed of leading church circles for a generation?” See May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America, 182. This article offers striking evidence that at the level of the average late-nineteenth-century minister and pundit, the answer is, quite simply, no.

15. Matthew C. Lee's survey of the Chicago religious press’ reaction to the Pullman episode led him to conclude that Catholics, not Protestants, were at the vanguard of Chicago's Social Gospel. See Lee, “Onward Christian Soldiers.” This overstates the case. While the local Catholic newspaper was on the whole more sympathetic to the strikers, it persistently criticized the ARU's boycott.

16. This conclusion dovetails with the bent of much of the recent scholarship on social Christianity, which has moved beyond an earlier preoccupation with the contributions of white, northern, middle-and-upper class Protestant intellectuals and theologians. As Gary Smith documents in an insightful overview of the literature, both classic and contemporary, a variety of historians in the last 30 years have underscored that the movement had roots also in the South and West, and within communities of women and African Americans. As stated above, and as Smith notes, Fones-Wolf's Trade Union Gospel speaks most directly to the contribution of the American working classes. See Smith, Search for Social Salvation, 27–31. Yet there are important ways in which the dissenting religious traditions embraced by some Protestant workers do not resemble other strains of “social Christianity.” Whereas Smith locates the origins of late-nineteenth-century social Christianity in the “efforts of evangelicals to reform antebellum America,” the roots of working-class religious protest lay with the people whom antebellum evangelicals were frequently trying to reform: journeymen, mill girls, and the like. See Smith, 35; for more on these antebellum antecedents see, for example, CitationLazerow, “Religion and the New England Mill Girl”; Lazerow, “Spokesmen for the Working Class”; Lazerow, Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America; and CitationSutton, Journeymen for Jesus. Meanwhile, as made clear below, in the later nineteenth century many working-class Protestants remained more radical than their middle-class counterparts, who most often sought to curtail the excesses of the existing economic system rather than completely overhaul it. For more on this latter theme see, for example, CitationMcGerr, A Fierce Discontent. While it is thus somewhat problematic to use the term “social Christianity” here, I do so in order to tap into the richest vein of academic conversation on modern Christian traditions that sought to bring the gospel to bear on social problems and in the hopes of stimulating further debate about the boundaries and fault lines between what are in fact many different social Christianities.

17. Lears, Rebirth of a Nation, 181–2; and CitationPostel, The Populist Vision, 211–12.

18. “Hard Luck Stories: Chicago's Unemployed Retail Their Sad Experiences,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 10, 1893.

19. CitationTenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 248–60.

20. Regarding pro-labor rhetoric consider, for example, the Reverend W.W. Everts’ sermon at the First Baptist Church on September 15, 1867. The Republican reported that he “condemned Trades’ Unions as productive of evil … But if he had to choose between labor and capital, he dare not go against labor, for Christ himself would have gone with it.” See “Labor and Christianity,” The Chicago Republican, September 16, 1867. Instances of cooperation included the campaign for the six-day week, which resonated with both Sabbatarianism and the quest for shorter hours. See Mirola, “Shorter Hours and the Protestant Sabbath.” The temperance movement also proved a source of unlikely partnerships, prompting Francis Willard of the Evanston-based Women's Christian Temperance Union to build relationships with local and national leaders of the Knights of Labor. See CitationBordin, Frances Willard, 137–44.

21. See, for example, “The Labor Demonstration,” Christian Freeman 1, no. 5 (May 2, 1867): 3; “Editorial Items,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 15, no. 19 (May 8, 1867): 148; and “Labor and Wages,” Christian Times and Witness 14, no. 37 (May 9, 1867): 3.

22. Chicago's growth during the postbellum decades was nothing short of phenomenal. In 1860 it was the ninth largest city in the United States with a population of 112,172; by 1870 it was the fifth largest city with 298,977 people; by 1880 it was the fourth largest city with 503,185 people; and by 1890 it was the second largest city with 1,099,850 people. Meanwhile, even as the population grew exponentially, its ethnic composition diversified. The percentage of persons hailing from the British Isles decreased by nearly half in the years between 1870 and 1890, while the percentage of Poles and Scandinavians, for example, steadily increased. See CitationPierce, A History of Chicago, Vol. III, 516, 545. On the rise of radical politics within the city's working classes after 1867, see Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics.

23. “Practical Lessons From Strikes: A Sermon By Reverend J. M. Caldwell,” Inter Ocean, July 30, 1877.

24. “The Churches: The Reverend Drs. Goodwin and Brushingham Think the Strikers Have Gone Too Far,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1885.

25. “Industrial Armies and Industrious Citizens,” The Interior 25, no. 1247 (April 19, 1894): 487; “The Strike,” Interior 25, no. 1249 (May 3, 1894): 549.

26. “Industrial Armies and Industrious Citizens,” Interior 25, no. 1249 (May 3, 1894): 555; “Unsuccessful Men,” Interior 25, no. 1250 (May 10, 1894): 585.

27. “The Meaning of It,” Advance 28, no. 1485 (April 26, 1894): 261–2.

28. On the ascendance of nativism in the postbellum period see CitationHigham, Strangers in the Land, 35–105.

29. “Petitions in Boots and Bummery,” Advance 28, no. 1486 (May 3, 1894): 277–8.

30. “Dr M'Pherson on Industrial Armies,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, 1894.

31. Barrows may have been making even more. As early as 1885 he was drawing a salary of $8000 a year, following a $1000 raise he received that December. See “Church Meetings: The First Presbyterian Society Raises Pastor Barrows’ Salary,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 10, 1885. In 1890 – before the depression put a serious dent in wages – the average factory worker earned only $448 per year. See CitationWinston, review of L'anarchisme aux Etats Unis, 119.

32. “Dr. M'Pherson on Industrial Armies.”

33. For an erudite account of this process see CitationStanley, From Bondage to Contract.

34. “Lockout the Theme of Sermons: Bishop Fallows Sees No Cause for Alarm in Labor Contests,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 16, 1894.

35. That the emerging paradigm of contract freedom was fraught with such ironies is a major theme of Stanley's book.

36. “Labor Trouble Possible,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 15 (April 11, 1894): 8.

37. There are good reasons to think of Chicago's wealthiest native-born Protestants as a kind of aristocracy. Frederic CitationJaher shows that wealth flowed through kinship networks. Eighty-eight of the 278 Chicago millionaires of 1892 – or 31.7% – had relatives that made at least $10,000 per annum in 1863. Not only was this class bound together by blood, but also through business. In 1892, at least 84 of these millionaires – or 30.2% – were involved in a joint business venture with other millionaires. See Jaher, The Urban Establishment, 496–8. Edward CitationBubnys has persuasively illustrated the extent of the native born's economic dominance for the immediate postbellum period. In 1870, 80% of the wealth was held by 10% of the 1226 families he sampled. The mean total wealth for native-born families was $19,257 per year. Meanwhile, the mean total wealth was $2475 per year for German-born families, $2580 per year for Irish-born families, and $2227 per year for Scandinavian families. See Bubnys, “Nativity and the Distribution of Wealth,” 105.

38. See CitationDeems, “Representative Religious Journalists,” 158.

39. See Morris, “Religious Journalism and Journalists,” 424.

40. By 1894 Gray co-owned the publication along with the McCormick estate. See CitationAndreas, History of Chicago from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 709.

41. In fact, it was a clash between police and strikers at the McCormick plant that had precipitated the demonstration that ultimately turned into the Haymarket Riot of 1886.

42. See Andreas, History of Chicago from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 709; and also, “CitationPurcell, Charles A,” in The Book of Chicagoans: Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the City of Chicago, 553.

43. The Church was by that point already well known for its ties to high society. Its founding membership in 1834 had included William B. Ogden, John H. Kinzie, Gurdon S. Hubbard, and Walter L. Newberry, names still enshrined on the streets of twenty-first-century Chicago. For a social history of St. James Episcopal see CitationSchultz, The Church and the City.

44. Quoted in Jaher, Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 518–19.

45. See CitationCarter and Grant, The Second Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 157–75. Barbara Armour was the widow of meatpacking tycoon George Armour. William Walker was a merchant prince and Eugene Pike a real estate maven. For more on the social geography of Prairie Avenue, see the magnificent map compiled by CitationConzen and Knox, “Prairie Avenue Elite in 1886 (Map)”.

46. See CitationSeligman, “Lincoln Park,” in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, 477–8.

47. “Swing's Church,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 23, 1879. I used the GDP deflator function at http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ to make this calculation.

48. “Prof. Swing is Dead: Peaceful End to the Eminent Theologian's Career,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1894.

49. The Civic Federation brought together religious, labor, and other civic leaders under the umbrella of a reform organization that long strove to eliminate corruption and improve the plight of the city's poor. For more on Stead's role in founding the Federation, as well as its larger legacy, see Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago; Smith, Search for Social Salvation, 65–86; and Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 333–5.

50. Quoted in CitationBaylen, “A Victorian's ‘Crusade’ in Chicago,” 428–9.

51. W.T. Stead to Mr. Lloyd, January 12, 1894. Reproduced in the Henry Demarest Lloyd Papers, Reel 5, Correspondence, General, September 1, 1893 –December 31, 1894, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

52. See Baylen, 431.

53. For more on Dorney see Schneirov, 104–5; as well as CitationFunchion, “Irish Chicago,” 64.

54. See Schnierov, 107–8.

55. “Trouble in Pennsylvania,” New World 2, no. 22 (February 3, 1894): 6. This more hospitable attitude to the foreign-born sprung naturally from the fact that the Catholic Church in Chicago was overwhelmingly comprised of the same. See CitationShanabruch, Chicago's Catholics, 31–104, 234.

56. “Trouble in Pennsylvania,” New World 2, no. 22 (February 3, 1894): 6.

57. Cited in CitationAbell, “The Reception of Leo XIII's Labor Encyclical in America, 1891–1919,” 466.

58. “Tribute of Church,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 4, 1893.

59. For a more in-depth discussion of the complex reasons why the encyclicals failed to inspire a grass-roots movement see Abell, “The Reception of Leo XIII's Labor Encyclical”; as well as CitationDolan, The American Catholic Experience, 334–6.

60. For my account of events leading up to the strike I have relied primarily upon CitationBuder, Pullman, 147–62. See also CitationLindsay, The Pullman Strike.

61. For my account of events leading up to the strike I have relied primarily upon CitationBuder, Pullman, 147–62. See also CitationLindsay, The Pullman Strike.

62. New World 2, no. 37 (May 19, 1894): 1.

63. “Says Both Sides are to Blame: The Reverend Frank M. Bristol Preaches on the Trouble at Homestead,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11, 1892.

64. “Strikes as Seen from the Pulpit: The Reverend Frank Bristol Declares Them Un-American and of No Avail,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 14, 1894.

65. See Buder, 172, 179–80.

66. See Buder, 181–3.

67. New World 2, no. 43 (June 30, 1894): 8.

68. “Passing Comment,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 27 (July 4, 1894): 1; “Topics of the Time,” Advance 28, no. 1495 (July 5, 1894): 421.

69. “Editorial Summary,” Standard 41, no. 45 (July 5, 1894): 4.

70. This account is drawn primarily from Lindsay.

71. See “Letter From The Archbishop,” New World 2, no. 45 (July 14, 1894): 8; “Church Notices,” Daily Sun, July 7, 1894; Daily Inter Ocean, July 7, 1894; and “Law and Order Mass-Meeting Sunday,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 7, 1894.

72. “Passing Comment – Almost Civil War,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 28 (July 11, 1894): 1.

73. “Editorial Summary,” Standard 41, no. 46 (July 12, 1894): 4.

74. “The Great Strike,” New World 2, no. 44 (July 7, 1894): 8.

75. “Why Not Arbitrate?” New World 2, no. 45 (July 14, 1894): 8.

76. “A Way Out of the Difficulty,” New World 2, no. 45 (July 14, 1894): 8. The Gazeta's view is reproduced in “Mysli z powodu strajkow,” Dziennik Chicagoski, July 12, 1894. Translation by Jessica Szafron, University of Illinois (Chicago).

77. “Modes of Enforcing the Law,” New World 2, no. 45 (July 14, 1894: 8.

78. See “Down on Mob Work,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1894; “Speaks as a Patriot,” Daily Inter Ocean, July 16, 1894; “Ireland Condemns It,” Evening Journal, July 16, 1894.

79. See Dolan, 308–15.

80. “Passing Comment – An Advance,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 28 (July 11, 1894): 1.

81. “News and Notes,” Living Church 17, no. 15 (July 14, 1894): 251; “Treasonous Leadership,” Advance 28, no. 1496 (July 12, 1894): 438. Even Frances Willard, who as discussed above had built bridges between the WCTU and organized labor, wrote to Henry Demarest Lloyd in 1895 that she believed Debs was “under the dominion of whiskey to such an extent that in the very height of that awful strike … he had to be locked up because he was utterly out of his mind through drink.” The WCTU remained officially neutral throughout the Pullman affair, hoping to gain credibility as a neutral arbitrator between capital and labor. See Craig, Religion and Radical Politics, 58.

82. “Law and Order in America,” Standard 41, no. 46 (July 12, 1894): 4.

83. See “The Pulpit,” Advance 28, no. 1497 (July 19, 1894): 455; “Camp Services at Pullman,” Chicago Times, July 16, 1894; and Standard, August 2, 1894.

84. “Lessons of the Time: Reverend Dr. Barrows Preaches on the Recent Strike,” Daily Inter Ocean, July 16, 1894.

85. “The Church and the Unemployed,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 2 (January 10, 1894): 2–3; “Social Functions of the Church,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 13 (March 28, 1894): 3; “Arbitration of Labor Troubles,” Northwestern Christian Advocate 42, no. 31 (August 1, 1894): 2.

86. “Tell of Their Work,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 12, 1894.

87. This is how May describes the crises that ultimately destabilized the antebellum Protestant consensus.

88. “Protest of a Pastor,” Chicago Times, July 15, 1894.

89. CitationAtwell, Northwestern University Alumni Record of the College of Liberal Arts, 201–2.

90. “Moses as the Father of Socialism: The Reverend H. G. Leonard Arraigns Fellow Pastors on the Labor Problem, Chicago Daily Tribune, February 20, 1894, 3.

91. See Buder, 53, 119–22.

92. “A Clergyman Hits Hard,” Railway Times 1, no. 11 (June 1, 1894): 1.

93. See “Should Pull Together: Strike Lessons as Urged by the Reverend J. M. Lockhart,” Chicago Times, July 30, 1894.

94. Renown came in response especially to his book, discussed below, which was reviewed in far-flung publications. See, for example, “The Pullman Strike,” Literary News, New York, October 1894; Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, WA, September 3, 1894; and “The Pullman Strike,” Times-Star, Cincinnati, OH, September 6, 1894.

95. The Mail testified to the strikers enthusiastic reception of him, declaring, “The dominie is the most popular man in town.” See “Pullman Taken Ill,” Chicago Mail, May 22, 1894.

96. “A Minister Favors the Strike: Pastor Carwardine Commends the Pullman Workmen for their Action,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 18, 1894; “Strikers Pack Kensington Hall,” Chicago Dispatch, May 18, 1894; “Hard Blows at Pullman,” The Daily News, May 17, 1894; “Consider Him a Foe: George M. Pullman Denounced from the Pulpit,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1894.

97. “Pastor vs. Pullman,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 23, 1894. See also “Bitterly Arraigns Mr. Pullman,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 16, 1894; “He Spoke of Pullman,” Chicago Times, June 16, 1894; “Carwardine on Pullman Again,” Chicago Herald, June 16, 1894; and “Debs to be Re-Elected President,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 21, 1894.

98. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike 13–14. Carwardine sent Henry Demarest Lloyd a copy of the book, appending a note that revealed his desire to change middle-class minds: “[I] have written it in the hope of reaching the class of people who are so prejudiced against the strikers,” he related. See Wm. H. Carwardine to Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, July 6, 1894. Reproduced in Henry Demarest Lloyd Papers, Reel 5, Correspondence, General, September 1, 1893–December 31, 1894, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

99. See, for example, “The Preacher and Mr. Pullman,” Evening Journal, May 21, 1894.

100. To the extent that scholars have taken note of Carwardine, they have mistakenly portrayed him as a lone crusader. See CitationCobb, Reverend William Carwardine and the Pullman Strike of 1894; and also May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America, 108–10.

101. The text of these letters and others can be found in “Pullman Stays Away,” Chicago Times, June 25, 1894.

102. This tradition was not unique to Chicago. It thrived in many other communities that experienced the strains of industrialization, and had roots that stretched back into the antebellum period. For more on these see note 15 above.

103. For some representative examples see “A Windy Bellows,” Workingman's Advocate 5, no. 21 (December 12, 1868): 2; “The Religious (?) Press and the Labor Platform,” Workingman's Advocate 8, no. 20 (March 23, 1872): 2; “Working People and their Employers,” Workingman's Advocate 12, no. 8 (August 26, 1876): 2.

104. “Liberal Christianity,” Workingman's Advocate 4, no. 17 (November 16, 1867): 2.

105. “The Struggles of a Poor Man,” Chicago Daily News, August 21, 1877.

106. It is likely that a comparable tradition of working-class protest existed within the Catholic Church as well, though this strain is mostly invisible. Letters published in the New World offer a tantalizing glimpse of it. See, for example, “Correspondence,” New World 2, no. 43 (June 30, 1894): 10; “Causes of Industrial Depression,” New World 2, no. 46 (July 21, 1894): 10; and “The Merits of the Strike,” New World 2, no. 46 (July 21, 1894): 10.

107. Cigar Makers’ Official Journal 19, no. 4 (January 1894): 4.

108. “Christ was a Socialist,” Railway Times 1, no. 5 (March 1, 1894): 1.

109. Reactions came in from near and far. See, for example, “Workingmen and the Church,” Christian Intelligencer 65, no. 10 (March 7, 1894): 1; and “The Church and Labor,” Interior 25, no. 1237 (February 8, 1894): 163–4.

110. See “Church is Criticised: L. W. Rogers’ Plain Talk to the Congregational Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 23, 1894; as well as “The Congregational Club” and “Labor and the Church,” Railway Times 1, no. 3 (February 1, 1894): 3.

111. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago, 397.

112. While it was not the first-ever labor church – others had cropped up in the early 1890s in both England and the United States – it was the first to be founded, not by sympathetic clergy, but by workingmen themselves. For more on the labor church movement, see CitationTrevor, “The Labor Church,” 781; and CitationBevir, “The Labour Church Movement, 1891–1902.”

113. “Will Found a Workingman's Church: Trade Unionists Adopt a Plan for Preaching at Bricklayers’ Hall,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 9, 1894.

114. “Labor Church Opens: Auspicious Beginning of the Modern Ecclesiastical Idea,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1894.

115. “The Modern Church: A Lively Debate Occupies One Session,” Railway Times 1, no. 6 (March 15, 1894): 1; “Church as an Issue: It is Discussed by a Labor Leader and a Preacher,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 26, 1894; “The Pulpit,” Advance 28, no. 1477 (March 1, 1894): 135.

116. This is, in my view, the most likely explanation. All traces of the organization disappear from the historical record after its 11 March gathering, making its lifespan typically short. Labor churches rarely survived more than a year, in most cases because they lacked the support of greater institutions and therefore depended heavily upon the talents of a charismatic leader. When sickness, weariness, or the allure of other opportunities drew him away, the organization floundered. See Bliss The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform 677; and also Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel, 86–7.

117. Eric CitationHirsch cites an Illinois Bureau of Labor report that puts the Anglo-American segment at 26% in 1884. The percentage would have certainly declined over the course of the ensuing decade in light of the rapid influx of immigrants during that time. See Urban Revolt, 93. The Central Labor Union (CLU) had splintered off from the TLA in 1884. See Hirsch, Urban Revolt, 115; Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 174.

118. See “The Sunday-Gossip,” Die Fackel, March 11, 1894. Translated by Ian Rinehart, Northwestern University.

119. CitationSwierenga, Dutch Chicago, 640–1.

120. “He Gave Up The Church,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1891.

121. “Had to Make a Choice,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1, 1891; “Labor War Declared For Roseland,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1891.

122. “Seek Pulpit Aid,” Chicago Times, May 29, 1894; “More Men Go Out,” Chicago Times, May 30, 1894; “Strikers are Joyful,” Chicago Times, May 31, 1894; “Shy of Patrimonium,” Chicago Record, May 31, 1894.

123. Swierenga, 313.

124. Swierenga, 328–9.

125. Fosterlandet, no. 20 (May 16, 1894): 4. Translation by Stina Bäckström, University of Chicago.

126. “Pastor Takes No Strikers’ Advice,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 25, 1894.

127. “Pastor Takes No Strikers’ Advice.”

128. “Food Must Be Worked For,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 27, 1894.

129. See “Chicago,” Interior 25, no. 1273 (October 18, 1894): 1357.