The St. Louis Commune of 1877
Mark Kruger’s The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland is, in one sense, a vital historical work: the second ever written on the four days at the end of July 1877 when the Workingman’s Party ruled St. Louis, and one which illuminates that, at the time, St. Louis was not just a domestic power but an international city of some renown, despite still being the American ‘frontier’. Kruger takes care to establish the connections between the Paris and the St. Louis Communes; curiously, less through some sort of ties of proletarian internationalism, and more those of bourgeois hive-mind. The bourgeois of St. Louis, six years after the destruction of Paris’ revolutionary experiment, were still then predominantly French Creole. Kruger sympathizes with the Communards and the St. Louis strikers both, illustrating their pathos best he can given the fragmentary historical record.
There is a visceral quality here: he cited Thiers’ general, Gaston Galliffet, parading in front of captured Parisian revolutionaries, saying “People of Montmartre, you think me a cruel man. You’re going to find out that I am much crueler than even you imagined”. Similarly, Kruger draws an apt comparison between the construction of Sacre Coeur and the obliteration of Montmartre as a working class stronghold and the St. Louis elite’s victory parades and the eternal reign of Khorassan. Compared to, say, Primm’s Lion of the Valley, which expends only four pages on the strike (which is never identified as a Commune, despite it being unassailably so), Kruger has tendered an incredible resource and view into the 1877 national rail strike, with a particular focus on St. Louis. He is also not afraid to comment, noting the exact moments where the strike/commune failed due to a crisis of leadership (and of armament).
That said, Primm does manage in his four pages to squeeze in a fair amount of quietism. See below, where I have selected relevant quotes between the two texts. Some flatly contradict the other, and in some Kruger deepens and extends Primm’s disinterested account.
Lion of the Valley, p 313:
“…one thousand volunteers were armed and drilling under the eyes of Generals Smith and Marmaduke [military leaders of the Committee of Public Safety forces] at the National Armory…Out of the Four Courts area came the police cavalry, follower by the mayor, Colonel David Armstrong of the police board, and General John D. Stevenson with about six hundred “citizen militia”, including an artillery battery. Smith and Marmaduke opposed the foray and did not participate. They did not think it necessary, and they feared the militia would provoke armed resistance which would provoke armed resistance which would expose its worthlessness — there were too many officers and too few privates, and the strikers had more veteran soldiers than the militia did.”
The St. Louis Commune of 1877, p 212:
“…six companies of federal troops did arrive at the Union Depot in St. Louis on Tuesday [July 24, 1877], purportedly to protect federal property…Many of the troops were African American…two generals, A.J. Smith and John S. Marmaduke, were empowered to raise a citizens’ militia. Smith had been a Union officer in the Civil War, and Marmaduke a Confederate. The class nature of the confrontation was clear…In an effort to pit workers against workers, the Committee [of Public Safety] called on all employees of St. Louis businesses to join the new militia…That day three hundred men of the Twenty-Third Infantry arrived in St. Louis, purportedly to protect federal property.”
Lion of the Valley, p 313:
“Despite press hysteria, there had been no real violence. A few windows had been broken, and one militiaman had been wounded by his own bayonet when he fell off a ledge at the Four Courts.”
The St. Louis Commune of 1877, p 210:
“[Albert Warren] Kelsey wrote, ‘Mayor Overstolz went on to say that his information was to the effect that no less than thirty thousand socialists were fully armed and equipped, and had long been arranging for the overturn of the regularly organized forces of the city.’…In this battle to the death, the mayor stated, the city did not have the forces to guard prisoners and therefore he ordered that no prisoners be taken. Reminiscent of Thiers’ order to Versailles troops attacking the Paris Commune, the mayor commanded, ‘Shoot them on the spot; do you understand me? Kill them; do not bring in any prisoners.”
Lion of the Valley, p 373:
“The Veiled Prophet celebration began in 1878, when Alonso and Charles Slayback, former residents of New Orleans, bought all of the floats and costumes used at the Mardi Gras and convinced St. Louis businessmen that an annual event modelled on the Mardi Gras would enhance the fall festivities [the annual Agricultural and Mechanical Fair] by its colorful display. The Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophet of the Enchanted Realm was created, and membership in the order was reserved for those who contributed to community accord and civic progress…”
The St. Louis Commune of 1877, p 235:
“On the Tuesday following the strike, St. Louis business leaders sponsored a military parade to show off their power and victory over striking workers, at which over five thousand armed men marched in a victory parade…Row after row of men in uniform with rifles, artillery, and other weapons marched through the streets of St. Louis, including working class neighborhoods…In March 1878…St. Louis’ elite citizens formed the Veiled Prophet organizations, purportedly based on a mythical kingdom, Khorassan, where the wealthy ruled over ordinary people…The VP founders were largely the same men who crushed the 1877 strike…the Veiled Prophet was a masked and unknown person, dressed in a white costume that hid his identity, surrounded with weapons…Although the identity of the Veiled Prophet is supposed to remain a secret, the first was John G. Priest, the St. Louis police commissioner”
Lion of the Valley, p 311:
“The squalor of ‘Castle Thunder’, ‘Wildcat Chute’, and ‘Clabber Alley’, and other degraded tenements and hovels, wage cuts, chronic hunger, and unemployment, and municipal soup kitchens stood in stark contrast to the lordly mansions which loomed in the market, the elegant ladies who descended daintily from their glittering carriages, and the rich merchants and landlords…”
The St. Louis Commune of 1877, p 160:
“During the 1870s pay cut followed pay cut in the industry, as railroad workers were forced to work longer hours in a very dangerous workplace…Between 1873 and 1880 wages in the industry as a whole were reduced by almost half. Deaths and maiming were everyday occurrences in railroad yards and on city streets.”
Lion of the Valley, p 311:
“Most of the St. Louis press assailed the strikers, with John Knapp of the Republican especially outraged by the ‘communistic’ threat to property.”
The St. Louis Commune of 1877, p 234:
Quoted from the Missouri Republican:
“The Communist wishes the government to take possession of all existing industries and of every form of accumulated property, and to administer both in the interest of the lazy and vicious.”
“No one can say what the revolutionists had in mind, but it is evident they had a scope far beyond a mere strike for higher wages. They sought to seize the city and distribute food to the poor, so the rich would be unable to buy food.”
The reason why Primm is so unenthused or unconcerned about the events of 1877 is probably most easily chalked up to a comfortability with the immutability of history engendered by his particular class position, which we may roughly guess at given he was the first chairman of the history department at University of Missouri-St. Louis, beginning in 1965. Kruger is a little-known Assistant Professor (Emeritus), curiously also at University of Missouri-St. Louis. Both men were and/or are involved with the Missouri State Historical Society; essentially, both occupy relatively similar positions with respect to the objects of their research, at least at a surface level of apprehension. This, perhaps, speaks less to the differences between the two researchers and more to the cloistered, hobbyist specialism of St. Louis historical study, one which, I imagine, prevails outside of the great metropolises of the US in general.
There are not clear class divides to indicate, particularly, why Kruger would be much more sympathetic to the strikers to such a degree. I can understand a certain level of mercenary glee in discovering a heretofore unnoticed topic of such ‘importance’ as that of the national strike in the Fourth City, but that still does not explain his tone, and seeming level of care. Nor is Kruger a Marxist of any particular stripe—at best, we may say he is a dedicated left liberal. Which is fine. I will revisit his particular position after reading the other (first) book on the commune, David T. Burbank’s Reign of the Rabble, and Rosemary Feurer’s Radical Unionism in the Midwest.