Richard Junger. Becoming the Second City: Chicago's Mass News Media, 1833-1898. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. xiv + 235 pp. $25.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-252-07785-2.
Reviewed by Jon Bekken
Published on Jhistory (August, 2011)
Commissioned by Donna Harrington-Lueker (Salve Regina University)
In this book, Richard Junger explores the de‐ sensibilities that often dominated local politics. velopment of the Chicago press in the nineteenth This is a particularly valuable study because it century (from 1833, when the city’s frst newspa‐ leads Junger to focus on a period that has re‐ per appeared, until 1898), looking at several key ceived relatively little attention, particularly from moments to understand the press’s role in shap‐ journalism historians, and once again reminds us ing the city’s development and its sense of itself. that the practice of journalism by no means uni‐ The jacket copy calls attention to Junger’s discus‐ formly followed the progressive narrative that sion of the 1871 fre, the Haymarket Square inci‐ still too often shapes our approaches. dent, the Pullman Strike, and the World’s My major criticism of this very useful work is Columbian Exposition--all from the fnal two the extent to which it persists in treating Chicago decades of the study--but this material occupies journalism as a singular entity, and one distinct less than half the book, and is not its most signif‐ from other centers of social power. Junger’s subti‐ cant contribution. Junger’s key focus is the path tle refers to “Chicago’s Mass News Media,” per‐ that led Chicago to become America’s second city-- haps in recognition of the fact that his focus on a campaign of civic boosterism that obviously English-language daily newspapers excludes the aimed signifcantly higher, but nonetheless played vast majority of titles published in the city. Refer‐ a central role in elevating a small frontier town ences to “mass news media” pepper the opening into a leading city over the course of several pages, but I looked in vain for a defnition. Junger decades. Junger asserts that this newspaper cru‐ gives his most extensive discussion to the Chicago sade “creat[ed] a unifying force among Chicago’s Daily News (1876-1978), Chicago Democrat disparate population and classes” (p. x), though I (1833-61), Chicago Evening Journal (1840-1929), have seen little evidence for this in the labor and Chicago Inter-Ocean (1865-1914), and especially immigrant press, or in the seemingly parochial the Chicago Times (1854-95) and Chicago Tribune H-Net Reviews
(1844?–present). While he does discuss the Chica‐ could beneft from more engagement with the goer Arbeiter-Zeitung (1874-1924) and the Illinois ways particular newspapers spoke to and on be‐ Staats-Zeitung (1848-1921), the New York Times half of particular classes and cultural formations. receives more extensive attention, judging from It is a far more nuanced and comprehensive ap‐ the length of the index entries. proach to nineteenth-century Chicago journalism Junger has read widely, often using databases than anything we have seen previously. (I leave to to facilitate the work, consulting the fles of the the side David Nord’s body of work, which also leading Chicago dailies but also online archives of sufers from too exclusive a focus on the English- African American periodicals and other newspa‐ language press but better appreciates the varied pers from across the country that mentioned nature of the journalistic ideologies operating in Chicago (some hardly the leading papers of their the Chicago newspaper scene and the niches dif‐ day). His bibliography lists ffteen Chicago news‐ ferent papers served; while Nord’s work begins papers, though some have evidently been consult‐ with the closing decades of the nineteenth centu‐ ed much less thoroughly (there are only a handful ry, it continues well into the twentieth, and so he of references to the two German-language dailies is fundamentally dealing with a later period, in his list), and eleven out-of-town papers, heavily when Chicago was well established as a major ur‐ weighted to the New York City press. Junger also ban center.) consulted surviving archival records, particularly Junger’s blinkered approach is perhaps most for the Daily News and Tribune (although there jarring when he discussed the Haymarket inci‐ are archival records for the Democrat and other dent, which he sees almost entirely through the early papers that might also have proved useful). eyes of the hysterical English-language press. While frontier Chicago was a predominantly Chicago’s anarchist movement was not an entirely Anglophone community, by the 1870s the city had marginal afair in the 1880s--it published a daily developed a substantial German-speaking com‐ newspaper, weeklies in two other languages, munity and press, and other foreign-language dominated the city’s predominantly German- communities and newspapers played a prominent speaking Central Labor Union, and regularly orga‐ role by the 1890s. Indeed, the Chicago Daily News, nized marches and picnics with thousands of par‐ the city’s new journalism pioneer which is cited ticipants. And it has been reasonably well docu‐ extensively in the study, was founded in a corner mented by historians, several of whom Junger of the Skandinaven (1866-1941) newspaper of‐ cites in his notes. However, Junger treats this fces. This vibrant foreign-language press is per‐ movement with disdain, referring to its press haps less relevant to Junger’s larger discussion of “coming ... under the editorial control of August how the press shaped Chicago’s image nationally, Spies” (p. 111; Spies was an upholsterer and labor but it certainly played a major role in shaping the activist who became editor of the daily Chicagoer city’s own understandings of itself. Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1880 and hanged by the state of Illinois in 1887 on the basis of articles pub‐ This narrowed focus is unfortunate, as Junger lished in the paper), a formulation that ignores in many ways ofers a useful corrective to our the signifcant fact that the editors and managers feld’s tendency to tell media history in isolation, of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and its sister papers were and through a quasi-biographical approach. Be‐ elected to six-month terms by the community in‐ coming the Second City is a serious attempt at cul‐ stitutions that owned the papers. Similarly, Junger tural history, and one that draws on an impres‐ refers to “a lack of success in the local political sive array of sources. Junger clearly recognizes arena” (p. 111) radicalizing Spies, when the that the press was not monolithic, even if his book record is clear that many German workers turned
2 H-Net Reviews to anarchism after Chicago ofcials refused to re‐ legal lynching against people they saw as a men‐ spect the results of elections in which labor candi‐ ace to their continued power. dates won the vote in some districts but were not While Junger sometimes writes as if the press seated. was an independent actor in all of this, the lead‐ While it is but an ofhand remark, Junger ing English dailies were in fact part and parcel of refers to the working-class Lehr und Wehr Verein the ruling order. In the decades leading up to militia as among “the same type of organizations Chicago’s emergence as an industrial and trans‐ that would aid the growth of Adolf Hitler’s Nation‐ portation powerhouse, the press was not merely al Socialist Party during the 1920s” (p. 111, no boosterish, as Junger establishes in his opening footnote is provided for this claim). There is not chapters. Like most journalism historians, Junger the slightest basis for such a characterization. The tends to treat newspapers as independent actors, Verein (the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court deci‐ shaping more than shaped by the society they sion that workers did not have Second Amend‐ serve. Like John Nerone (who frst raised this ar‐ ment rights after Illinois outlawed the group) was gument in his The Culture of the Press in the Early organized to provide security at movement Republic: Cincinnati, 1793-1848 [1989]), I believe events, to provide training and recreational op‐ the media are best understood ecologically, em‐ portunities to its members, and to serve as a coun‐ bedded in a network of relationships, and in the terweight to the organized violence being visited context of those relationships. Take Long John against Chicago’s labor movement on a daily ba‐ Wentworth, for example. He was indeed a pioneer sis. There is not a single documented instance of when he took charge of the weekly Democrat in Verein members attacking opponents or fring 1836 and built it up into a political powerhouse their weapons outside of organized presentations and the city’s frst successful daily, even if his and target practice. The rest of Junger’s discussion Democrat was redolent of a bygone era of person‐ of Haymarket is more even-handed, noting the al political organs just twenty-fve years later regular incitements to violence in the mainstream (when he sold it to the Tribune). But Wentworth press and the lynch mob atmosphere it helped was simultaneously an editor, a politician (serv‐ sustain, even if (like Paul Avrich’s The Haymarket ing six terms in Congress and two as mayor), and Tragedy [1984] before him; Avrich ofers a difer‐ a real estate speculator. None of these can be un‐ ent candidate in Dave Roediger and Franklin derstood in isolation from one another, or in iso‐ Rosemont’s Haymarket Scrapbook [1986] he gives lation from the political machine he built and rather more attention to theories about who which continued to exercise signifcant infuence threw the bomb than either the evidence or the is‐ years after Wentworth’s Democrat no longer pub‐ sue merits. lished. No doubt Wentworth fercely believed in The central fact at issue in the Haymarket in‐ the internal improvements he championed in cident (which occupies eleven pages of the book, Congress and in the pages of his newspaper--in‐ as part of a longer chapter ostensibly about Chica‐ frastructure projects that did much to cement go radicalism but actually about the broader la‐ Chicago’s prosperity. But he also profted person‐ bor movement that came to prominence in the ally as a result, both fnancially and politically. His post-Civil War era) is that Chicago’s English-lan‐ three roles were inextricably intertwined. For guage press actively whipped up xenophobic hys‐ Wentworth, internal improvements were of cen‐ teria, urged the most ruthless suppression of tral importance, but not so central that he ever democratic rights for working-class radicals, and contemplated joining the Whigs, who were more were part of an elite-wide conspiracy to commit a sympathetic to such measures (and who main‐ tained their own newspapers to challenge Went‐
3 H-Net Reviews worth--one of which, the Evening Journal, eventu‐ signed sweetheart deals to build their plants on ally morphed into the Chicago Sun-Times). But public school land, were engaged in a wide array while Wentworth actively shaped public debate of anticompetitive practices, and relied on politi‐ and developments in this area, he sought to avoid cians hardly known as models of probity to pro‐ the contentious issue of slavery--throwing his lot mote what they saw as the greater good--a greater in with the new Republican Party only when de‐ good that served the interests of Chicago as they velopments forced his hand. He was never fully saw them, to be sure, but one which made them comfortable with the Republicans, nor they with wealthy and powerful while giving short shrift to him, but his political machine provided the mar‐ the immigrant workers in the city’s burgeoning gin of victory in many elections and he was a industries or the communities that reaped the re‐ force to be reckoned with until the end. Nor was sults of the decision to reverse the fow of the Wentworth alone. While the Daily News’s Victor Chicago River to carry sewage away from the Lawson was not himself a politician, his father city’s water supply. was a real estate speculator elected to the Chicago It is easier to understand why Yerkes thought city council in 1864. The Tribune’s Joseph Medill he could prevail against the combined voices of served a not very successful term as mayor, and the newspaper establishment, or why a succes‐ Tribune managers were always in the thick of sion of new publishers positioned themselves as Chicago and statewide politics. The Times was, in voices for the underdog if one confronts the ex‐ its fnal period, the house organ of the Carter Har‐ tent to which Chicago’s publishers were at least as rison wing of the Democratic Party. The city’s much a part of the power structure as a check leading publishers were actively engaged in upon it. Becoming the Second City is a valuable Chicago politics and business afairs throughout and interesting book, but more emphasis on the this period, and for decades to come--thoroughly ecological context in which these papers were enmeshed in commercial and political governing published could help reinterpret the stories Chica‐ circles in a way I suspect was much more typical go’s newspaper publishers told about (and to) across the country than is generally recognized. themselves. Given this, it is hardly surprising that, as Junger demonstrates, the Chicago press was a booster press, touting the city’s commercial (and social) prospects and successes and denigrating its rivals (though I suspect one could fnd many ex‐ amples of this up to the present day). The book ends with streetcar magnate Charles Yerkes’ un‐ successful efort (he failed by one vote) to secure a ffty-year franchise renewal; a fght in which most publishers lined up with good government forces and the Harrison machine while Yerkes and the Inter-Ocean, which he bought as his daily mouth‐ piece, waged a bitter campaign against the “trust press” and its proprietors’ ambition to control city government. Junger terms this a “bizarre rever‐ sal” (p. 186), but it had some resonance in a city where competing newspaper publishers collabo‐ rated to promote their own political tickets,
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Citation: Jon Bekken. Review of Junger, Richard. Becoming the Second City: Chicago's Mass News Media, 1833-1898. Jhistory, H-Net Reviews. August, 2011.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33750
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