May 03, 2020

Jack Kelly’s "The Edge of Anarchy”; “Union Maids” director Julia Reichert (Part 2)

43 minutes

Jack Kelly, author of "The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America,” and Part 2 of our interview with Oscar-winning director Julia Reichert.

I'll tell you what I was thinking about when we wrote it; I was thinking about the Wobblies. Director Julia Reichert's call at the Oscars earlier this year for “workers of the world to unite” went viral; she and Steven Bognar won for their film American Factory, and we’ve got the second part of her interview with 9 to 5 founder Karen Nussbaum.

The Pullman strike was a solidarity strike. they were striking in sympathy with the Pullman workers and that idea of people pulling together I think you're seeing now.

At the peak of the Gilded Age a conflict in one of America’s largest factories exploded into the most extensive and threatening labor uprising in American history. Jack Kelly's "The Edge of Anarchy” tells the dramatic story of this historic event, transporting the reader from the fabulous White City of the 1893 World’s Fair to the nation’s industrial heartland, where unprecedented hard times are brewing rage across the continent.

In the summer of 1894, more than half a million desperate railroad workers went on strike. Riots broke out in Chicago and other major cities. The nation’s commerce ground to a halt—famine threatened isolated towns. The U.S. Attorney General declared the country to be on “the ragged edge of anarchy.”

Produced by Chris Garlock; to contribute a labor history item, email [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.

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