Mrs. O'Leary's Cow and the Reconstruction of Class Relations

Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have long devoted careful attention to floods, fires, epidemics, and other disasters. Such crises—and the frenzies that follow them—expose the marrow of social relations as people scramble to survive the disasters and to rebuild their societies. In a fascinating and well-argued book, Karen Sawislak argues that the Great Fire of Chicago not only leveled 17,420 buildings and 2,100 acres, but it also leveled the social hierarchies that had maintained civic order in the city. Thus, the residents of the Illinois metropolis struggled both to reestablish stability after the destruction and to reconstruct social relations.

Sawislak focuses her study on the battle to restore the city’s class hierarchy. Prominent Chicagoans, particularly native-born newspaper editors and members of the business elite, occupy the center of the analysis. Warning that the disaster imperiled the future of the city, Chicago merchants and civic leaders asserted their claim to define what was in the best interests of all Chicagoans and thus to lead the reconstruction effort. At stake, according to Sawislak, was the nature of the social order, as wealthy businessmen formulated postfire policies that safeguarded private property, celebrated self-reliance, and shored the city’s class structure. Although these elite residents viewed themselves as selfless, nonpartisan, and dispassionate defenders of the public good, their prescriptions for the city, as Sawislak perceptively notes, were hardly neutral in their goals. Instead, they forged policies that reflected a particular vision of society—their class-based “sense of urban or civic order” (p. 16). Relying on a wide range of published and manuscript sources, but drawing most often from local newspapers, Sawislak traces this elite crusade, as well as competing visions of civic order, through a series of public-policy debates during the three years following the Great Fire.

Even before the embers had cooled, Chicago faced its first challenge. Residents, most notably wealthy Chicagoans, feared that looters and criminals would besiege the city and that disorder and lawlessness would reign. Native-born businessmen also worried that corrupt and incompetent politicians would be unable or unwilling to restore stability, and thus prominent merchants, industrialists, and editors looked to outside forces to preserve law and order. According to Sawislak, a group of elite business leaders, over the opposition of the governor, many local politicians, and municipal law enforcers, persuaded the Civil War hero and fire survivor Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, along with five companies of infantry, to assume control of law enforcement for the weeks following the fire. Under martial law, Sheridan’s troops attempted to restore the foundations of social stability; they patrolled the central business district, protected wealthy neighborhoods, and safeguarded valuable property. Elite Chicagoans, who bypassed democratic institutions, saw nothing self-interested in their actions. Rather, according to Sawislak, they believed that the preservation of civic order entailed the defense of private property and the control of the dangerous class.

The relief of hunger and suffering exposed a similarly class-based vision of the public good. Once again, prominent Chicagoans determined that public institutions were incapable of responding to the task of housing and feeding 100,000 homeless residents; within four days of the end of the fire, Mayor R. B. Mason turned control over the public relief campaign to the private, elite-operated Chicago Relief and Aid Society. Embracing the core assumptions of “scientific charity,” the organization’s leaders used the relief effort to reduce dependence, reward personal responsibility, and support their definition of the “worthy” fire victims. Based on a careful analysis of relief applications, Sawislak demonstrates that the process became mired in red tape, as charity workers tried to distinguish worthy applicants from unworthy malingerers. In the minds of relief organizers, the greatest sufferers from the blaze were the previously independent, self-reliant, middle-class residents suddenly enduring hardship—rather than poor immigrants disproportionately rendered homeless and jobless by the fire. Thus, charity workers...