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Guarding the Switch: Cultivating Nationalism during the Pullman Strike

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Troy Rondinone
Troy Rondinone
Affiliation:
Southern Connecticut State University
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Abstract

The Pullman Strike of 1894 was a cataclysmic event for the nation. During its violent course, the print media provided an interpretive frame that portrayed the strike in large measure as an immigrant-inspired attack on American laws and democratic customs. Often characterizing the strikers as “foreigners” in the thrall of anarchist ideologies and a tyrannous labor chieftain, journalists painted a stark picture indeed. Employing framing theory, Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and recent insights on the ethnic quality of nationalism, this essay argues that newspapers and other major print periodicals significantly contributed to the formation of nationalist attitudes at a time when many Americans were deeply worried over the direction in which the country was headed.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 83 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2009

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References

1 Remington, Frederic, “Chicago under the Mob,” “Chicago under the Law,” and “The Withdrawal of U.S. Troops,” in Harper's Weekly, July 21, 28, Aug. 11, 1894Google Scholar. The author thanks Joyce Appleby, Graham Cassano, Allesandro Duranti, Naomi Lamoreaux, and John Laslett for their help and support.

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65 Ascribing influence to these periodicals is based on the centrality of text in the nineteenth century. This was a nation of readers, and newspapers provided a vital link to national affairs. Since the Civil War, newspaper readership had expanded greatly as illiteracy rates plummeted. In the last three decades of the century, circulation totals for daily publications had risen from 4,000 to over 12,000. During the strike, the press sold even more papers. The Chicago Times, for instance, gained 16,032 new readers in week one of the strike and would gain many more by strike's end. On the growth and influence of the press, see Emery, Michael, Emery, Edwin, and Roberts, Nancy L., The Press in America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 9th ed. (Boston, 2000), 157Google Scholar.

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