1877: The Grand Army of Starvation (review)

Film Reviews 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation Produced by the American Social History Project, 33 W 42nd Street, N. Y., N. Y. 10036 (212) 944-8695; 16mm color film (rental $63, purchase $433) or VHS and 3/4" video (rental $63, purchase $358) . The impact of the work of George Rude, E. P. Thompson, Herbert Gutman and other social historians is inexorably working itself into American scholarship of working class culture. By analyzing a variety of nontraditional sources and by seeking to understand working class culture on its own terms, Rude, Thompson, Gutman and others have redefined the role of riots in modern history as more "purposeful political behavior than had heretofore been shown. The film 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation shows that these newer perceptions have been more widely adapted to an American context and are slowly being disseminated to an increasingly visually demanding public. More specifically, throughout this film one can feel the influence of the late American social historian Herbert Gutman, its guiding light, before his untimely death last year . The dramatic strikes that took place across much of the nation in July of 1877 provide a riveting focus for an analysis of crucial cultural and class relationships developing in the period when America was rapidly falling under the influence of industrial capitalism. Background lithographs illustrate the vast and revolutionary power of the railroads, the harsh wage cuts against railroad workers, the ravages of the Depression of 1873, and the spontaneous onset of the strike in Martinsburg, West Virginia on July 16, 1877. All are interwoven with great skill and dramatic appeal. The larger cause of the outbreaks, we are told, involved the growing inequality of wealth and power in American life. This was no Marxist led upheaval but a homegrown protest movement. The unprecedented violence of the 1877 strikes was fostered in large part, the film asserts, by the actions of the corporations and the governments which served them. An effective sound track occasionally produces muffled voices sadly questioning the cost paid by workers who sacrificed their blood to save the 93 Civil War concluded only a dozen years before. "1877" follows the course of the strikes through Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago and ends by showing the intervention of federal troops on behalf of the railroads as well as the skewed press coverage of the strikes . "Melodrama [was] chosen over accuracy," narrator James Earl Jones intones, as protesters were "depicted as animals." After quoting the Independent 's comment that "Napoleon was right- the way to deal with a mob is to exterminate it," Jones comments that "preoccupation with military force only obscures the larger conditions" which produced the strike. The concluding image of the film shows a labor convention and the message is clear— labor had to effectively organize itself against the superior organization of capital. This film attempts to question the received wisdom of nineteenth century class relationships from a perspective that is decidedly (although not uniformly) sympathetic to the point of view of the strikers. The use of actors as middle class on-screen witnesses who decry the callousness of the railroad leaders is a technique that effectivly helps mask the ' ideological point of view of the filmakers. The title of the film comes from a remark of Albert Parsons, a Chicago speaker in 1877 who was attempting to politicize protesters into a "Grand Army of Starvation," reminiscent of the struggles of the Civil War. The film might have added that Parsons was intimidated from speaking further by death threats from wealthy business and political leaders. The refrain "It takes two to make a bargain," extracted from a poem in a labor journal is counterposed several times during the film against the hard-hearted attitude of capitalists such as Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 1877 was produced by the American Social History Project. Based in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the Project is funded by the NEH and the Ford Foundation, and has endeavored to create a number of audiovisual aids and a two volume book to expand public awareness of the role of working class culture in nineteenth century America. Produced on a budget of...