Time Of Chicago Fire The Working People example essay topic

As the Fire spread out of control, the mood of the population changed from interest to alarm and panic. They realized that there was no place of guaranteed safety and began to create wild crowds on the bridges over the River. The witnesses of that event said that it seemed as if the ground was itself on fire. Husbands and wives, parents and children were separated.

A lot of Chicagoans were trapped or crashed in their homes, on one of the bridges or in the Washington and La Salle Street tunnels. Shortly after the Fire, Stephen L. Robertson, a North division resident marked on his printed map of the city what was left. The map was called "Burnt District". According to the map, 1800 buildings were gone.

300 Chicagoans were dead. 90000 people lost their homes and a great number of Chicagoans lost their places of work. The property loss was 200 min. dollars. The North Division had been destroyed greatly. There were ruins everywhere. They became a popular subject for photographers and illustrators. E.J. Goodspeed wrote in his history of the fire, "No city can equal now the ruins of Chicago, not even Pompeii, much less Paris".

The Fire made a lot of people homeless but the rich people suffered not so greatly as the less well-to-do people because the rich people had solid insurance, ready credit, other assets, and a substantial network of family and friends. The less well-to-do suffered more severely. Mother Jones, a witness of the Fire, told that they stayed all night a next day without food and often went into the lake to keep cool. Old St. Mary's church at Wabash Avenue and Peck Court became the refuge for a lot of homeless. Near by, in an old destroyed building the Knights of Labour held meetings. The Knights of Labour was the Labour organization of those days.

The refugees spent their evenings at their meetings listening to splendid speakers. From the time of Chicago Fire the working people took an active part in the efforts to better their working and living conditions. One of the first strikes was the strike of the Baltimore and Ohio rail roads employees. Some years ago, the rail roads succeeded in getting a law that in case of a strike the train-crew should bring in the locomotives to the round-house before striking.

The strikers obeyed that law. They brought in locomotives in Pittsburgh. One night a riot occurred. But the locomotives were destroyed. They were set on fire. The roundhouse caught fire as well.

Over one hundred locomotives belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were destroyed. The crime was made by hoodlums backed by the businessmen of Pittsburgh. But the strikers were charged with those crimes. Before the Great Chicago Fire several labor laws limiting the raise of workers' wages were passed.

They legalized such labor systems as slavery and indentured servitude. But after the Fire the authorities had to pass labor laws improving working conditions. Federal employees were granted a 10-hr day and then in 1908 the Supreme Court recognized the legality of state legislation that limited the work day to 8 hrs. It was the time of the beginning of America's industrial life. At that time anti-labour legislation came with the growth of factories, the accumulation of capital and the rise of banks. The workers began to understand that legislatures carried out the will of the capitalists.

And they began to protest.