On May 10, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was completed when the Union Pacific railway company, building westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa met the Central Pacific company, building eastward from Sacramento, California. The two companies met up at Promontory Summit, Utah, and honored the completion of the first American transcontinental railroad with a celebration, involving the hammering of the last railroad spike, made of gold, with a hammer made of silver. To many, the hammering of the Golden Spike was a signal of the newfound unity of the country, connecting western states and territories with the rest of the Union. However, the creation of more railroads which spanned the nation after the Golden Spike was driven into the soil ushered in a new age of big business which had a tremendous effect on the worker-company relationship. The corporations’ value of laborers reached an all time low; workers joined unions to stand up to their oppressors, and used strikes to voice their grievances on a new scale.
I am doing my blog post on worker relationships with railroads leading up to and during the modernist period, because it is clear that they were influential to the time period (Mac is a union man, Eugene V. Debs makes an appearance, the Pullman Strike is mentioned, and we consistently see trains appearing throughout). The railroads were some of the biggest businesses of the late 1800‘s, and marked the advent of conducting business on a large, nationwide scale. Eugene V. Debs strived to incorporate all railroad workers into one union, the American Railway Union (ARU), because he saw the growing threat of big railroad business.
Railroad strikes filled the 1880‘s. Following the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, The Great Southwest Strike failed in May of 1886, as did the Burlington Strike in 1888. However, one of the most rattling railroad strikes came in 1894, after George Pullman, creator of the Pullman Palace Car Company, cut his employees’ wages 25% in 1893. The workers, living in “Pullman towns,” living spaces controlled by the Pullman company, could no longer pay the rent for company housing. By April of 1894, the workers in Pullman, Illinois decided to join the ARU. Pullman reacted by refusing to recognize the ARU or any negotiations; conflict became inevitable. Pullman proceeded to lock out the newly unionized workers, and the strike commenced. The effects of the strike, however local as it seemed, were seen all over the nation. Workers in California boycotted Pullman cars in railway yards everywhere. At a Union Pacific junction, workers ordered to move a train “declined, unless the Pullman cars were removed.” On June 27 at a station in La Grande, California, the switchmen denied any train coupled to a Pullman car access to the platform.
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Armed soldiers escort a train coupled to Pullman cars through crowds of jeering people in Chicago.
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When a court injunction was issued to end the strike, President Grover Cleveland ordered U.S. armed forces to act. On July 5 and 6, mobs demonstrated with increasing violence in Chicago. On July 7, Debs and other ARU officers were arrested. In 1895, Debs’ case reached the Supreme Court, and the ruling acted as a defeating blow to strikes everywhere, insisting that worker organizations could be subject to antitrust laws. Debs was sentenced to six months in prison after violating the federal court’s order. Later, when imprisoned again in 1918 for making an anti-war speech, Debs decided to run for president from behind bars, and because a martyr for socialism.
Following Deb’s loss, the Railroad Shopmen’s Strike began in 1922 alongside the modernist movement, in response to the second of several wage cuts in July. Many railroad shop workers walked off the job, and opponents to organized labor called for federal backing which led to confrontations with unions in many towns and cities everywhere. This strike would have been reminiscent of the earlier Pullman strike, indicating to the country that corporations had not changed to benefit railroad workers since the late 1800’s. And these events would have been at the forefront of Dos Pasos’ mind before publishing The 42nd Parallel in 1930.
I think the history of the railroad labor struggle is essential to a more well-rounded understanding of the modernist movement. There is a constant tension between the laborers and the business owners, that was new in America. Railroads were pretty much the first big business to emerge and go nationwide, and that allowed for labor disputes to have national effects. Modernist writers look back on something that many didn’t quite fully understand, and voice their disapproval of it (think of the Lost Generation with World War I, or Dos Pasos highlighting the problems with Capitalism). Even Gertrude Stein, whether you like her or not, writes works that exhibit even the slightest possibility of this critique and exposure. Understanding the history of rising tensions between classes that started to escalate with the railroad industry is key to understanding the goal of the modernist writer, which is why I believe Dos Pasos puts such an emphasis on the railroads (in both explicit and subtle manners) in his novel.
It's a misfortune that workers of the time in all professions, not only railroad workers, are forced to fight an uphill battle against not only their bosses but at times the government as well. However that seems to coincide with the staple theme in literature of rooting for the underdog going against unfavorable odds. The most successful literature of the period would often have a working class protagonist struggling to find his place in a world or be focused on criticizing the economic system in the US.
ReplyDeleteI like that how you highlight the idea that many Americans saw the completion of the railroad as a way to unify the country, but how it also in a way created distinct tensions between workers and corporations. I think it's also important to recognize the role of Chinese immigrants as the driving force behind the completion of the railroad, as upon the completion they along with their work were completely disregarded. In a similar way, Dos Passos highlights this idea that immigrants were placed on the back burner, their contributions not often noted or recognized.
ReplyDeleteI think this was an excellent topic to explore since the Dos Passos' novel mentions and alludes to the unions many times throughout the novel and, as you said, briefly mentions important events such as the Pullman Strike. It seems important therefore, to understand the railroad workers struggles as they worked in this New America and enter into the modern times of the United States. The struggles of the workers also seems to interesting in that, although Dos Passos mentions events like the Pullman Strike, he does not elaborate on them. Such a writing technique appears to be a manner of commenting that the struggles of these workers were not very focused on by groups of people that it did not effect. As Lindsey states, it seems that Dos Passos is commenting on their struggles being put on the "back burner."
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ReplyDeleteVery enlightening post! The history component adds a much needed perspective to the novel as a whole, a gap that I personally had in my understanding without a concrete account to bridge it. It's fascinating that Debs ran for president from behind bars. It makes his efforts seem to have a much deeper rooted merit in his attempt and passion to unionize the workers... There is definitely a more wholesome picture painted of the workers' desires in Dos Passos and of the attempted "Heroes" within the novel (like Debs) when put into the historical perspective you have provided. Thank you for enriching the text!
ReplyDelete-Chris Newton
I believe that understanding of this history is essential to reading the 42nd Parallel, because, precisely what your post mentions, the presence of trains and laborers' struggles are so prominent in the novel. I wonder if any parallel history exists for the other modes of transportation, especially by water (i.e. boats, steamships).
ReplyDelete~Kara Poon
DeleteI thought it was really interesting how you juxtapose the positivity of unifying the nation with the negativity of the lack of workers' rights. The Transcontinental Railroad was a very important moment in history because it paved the way for workers to demand for their rights, which led to important worker's rights laws. This post is really relevant to Dos Passos' novel because Mac and his friends are trying to fight for worker's rights, but they take it a step forward by arguing for equality of all people through Communist ideals.
ReplyDeleteWell, the way I see Modernism is a conflict between traditions and progressive thinking, but I guess railroad lockout between union workers (even if they are the ARU) and their bosses could be spun that way - but I'd say it's more of a universal humanitarian struggle; admittedly, part of Modernism also.
ReplyDeleteOne other note is that the lockout actually resulted in violent riots in other areas of the country - but this wasn't documented very well and I can't double check the authenticity of it - but I think it ties in well to the theme of dissatisfaction and consequences of labor violations.
This really puts into perspective both the social tension regarding railroads and their overall glorification. There is gap and tension between the good and the bad effects of the railroads just as there is a gap and tension between social classes, socialism and capitalism, working and experiencing, and even "selling out" and fighting for the cause. I believe that in the Modernist society, every aspect of life mirrors each other. The unrest is channeled to every issue, and everything in this modernist society is linked through this bond of general dissatisfaction. As the professor mentioned, we are influenced by outside factors, whether it be newspapers, social issues, etc. You really showcased how the themes of The 42nd Parallel are projected onto every aspect of life in the Modernist World, and that everything is connected and influenced by everything else.
ReplyDeleteI was really interested in your initial anecdote about the silver hammer and golden spike which finished the transcontinental railroad. It's actually pretty ironic how the railroad, built on the backs of the lower class, was finished with such an image of wealth and ostentation. I can almost imagine the men in the suits ushering the dirty workers away with their grubby tools before emerging all shiny and brand new for the media with their silver and gold. One thing I do remember from previous knowledge, though, was that the transcontinental railroad, and many others for that matter, were built by immigrant employees. Given the language barrier, I wonder what these strikes meant to them, if they meant anything at all.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Dos Passos would focus on such political tumultuous time for this novel. In the prologue for The 42nd Parallel, USA, Dos Passos ends by saying that in spite of our diverse experiences and realities, it is speech that unifies and defines the people of the US. If he truly believed that speech was the unifying aspect of American society, why then would he focus on a period where speech (in the form of riots and protests) seemed to only broaden the divide between people (specifically the working and upper classes). Although the railroad labor struggle is an excellent and relevant example of the conflicts created by speech in America, it is far from the last. America has always had a great history of the struggle between free and limited speech. Perhaps Dos Passos is trying to point out how with the industrialization of America and the rise of big business, the only speech that will begin to matter is that of the rich, robbing America of the identity and unity that it has always prided itself on.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting how the railroads are in themselves a paradox in the sense that they are considered to be both the great unifier of the country (as mentioned in the beginning of Conrad's article) and a great source of conflict and tumult. The motif of railroads and the people riding the railroads in the 42nd Parallel by Dos Passos highlights another major theme in the construction of the railroads - the movement of the American people as technology progressed through the modern era. In his novel I believe Dos Passos not only tries to show the struggle of the working-class person as big business industrializes America, but he tries to underscore the impact the progression of technology has on the pace of life of the average American in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteYour blog helped me realize how modernists used their novels to make social critiques. Just as Gertrude Stein commented on the state of race and gender in the United States by creating a book centered around a black woman, Dos Passos also makes a social observation by writing about railroads. His novel's focus on the railroads of the early 20th century and the corrupt corporations that ran them then was a social criticism on the same corrupt businesses that controlled the railroads in the 1920's. Modernists writers like Stein and Dos Passos used current issues to form their books around. In dos Passos's case, I now understand that he was commenting on the continued cycle of abuse that workers faced at the hands of their employers. His novel therefore advocated for change, as did many other Modernist writings, which your blog helped me to see!
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