Volume 30, Number 16 · October 27, 1983
'The Peculiar American Stamp'
By Gore Vidal
Novels, 1875-1886
by William Dean Howells
The Library of America, 1,232 pp., $25.00
On May 1, 1886, American workers in general and Chicago's workers in particular decided that the eight-hour work-day was an idea whose time had come. Workers demonstrated; and a number of factories were struck. Management responded in kind. At McCormick Reaper strikers were replaced by 'scabs.' On May 3, when the scabs left the factory at the end of a long traditional workday, they were mobbed by the strikers. Chicago's police promptly opened fire and America's gilded age looked to be cracking open.
Review, 9236 words
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