Chicago Printers' Unions and the Mechanization of the Printed Word

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(Register through the "More Info" link!) Sitting at the foot of the Great Lakes and at the center of a sprawling transcontinental rail network, Chicago quickly grew into an industrial metropolis in the nineteenth century. In particular, Chicago was a printing town, home to national publications as well as large commercial printers that served the broader Midwest and West. This massive industry produced something else, too: militant printers’ unions that agitated for higher wages, shorter hours, and safer working conditions. Drawing on local archives, this talk by scholar J. Dakota Brown argues that the union printers of Chicago played indirect but surprisingly important roles in the history of design, technology, and mass communication.