That Time The Cops Went Wilding In Tompkins Square. No, The First Time.

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https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-the-cops-went-wilding-in
Erik Loomis

A bit of history to help keep us informed about today.

Matt Morgen(?); Illustration in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, 1874 Jan. 31, p. 344. Wikimedia Commons.

On January 13, 1874, thousands of unemployed New Yorkers met in Tompkins Square Park to protest their unemployment and poverty. There, the police would beat them in the first large-scale state crackdown of the American white poor (slaves, there were lots of crackdowns of course) in the nation's history. It would not be the last.

The Panic of 1873 was the first of the post-Civil War economic collapses to throw the working class into desperation. Caused primarily by corrupt railroad financing, especially thanks to the notorious Jay Cooke, the Panic led to high unemployment throughout the 1870s and created the first explicitly class-based political actions in American history. By November 1873, 55 railroads had gone bankrupt, wages were slashed, unemployment jumped, and the American working class began realizing the impact of the unregulated capitalism suddenly transforming their country. Most Americans at this time lacked what we might consider a "class consciousness" or any real doubt that the new system of industrial capitalism would serve their interests as independent operators manfully thriving. These people really, really wanted to believe that capitalism was great. It was not. The Panic began to lead to the first meaningful questioning of how this system affected workers, and while substantial and well-organized radical resistance would take some time to develop, the first stirrings of resistance are clear in the mid 1870s.

Some urban workers responded to the Panic by organizing into early unemployed workers movements (probably we can trace the very first stirrings of these types of movement to the economic problems of 1857). In New York, the Committee of Safety was formed, demanding public works projects to employ those who needed work and the mayor to meet with them about it. In the first days of 1874, a series of protests became increasingly larger. By January 8, over 1,000 workers were meeting in Tompkins Square Park and the demands were growing, including for the 8-hour day.

Already, though, the nascent labor movement in New York was divided between "radicals" and "conservatives." Some of the leaders of the Committee of Safety were socialists and other labor leaders in New York denounced them as "communists," a term with a much less defined threat than the post-1917 period but one that already meant un-American. A bricklayer named Patrick Dunn led a counter movement that denounced the Committee of Safety but included many of the same demands, culminating in a January 5 march to City Hall. The Iron Molders International Union also tarred the Committee of Safety with a similar brush, using the term "anarchist."

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