As the 19th century prepared to turn into the 20th, a cataclysmic confrontation between labor and management occurred in the steelmaking town of Homestead, Pa., pitting the wealthy Carnegie Steel Co. against one of the strongest unions of the day. The workers lost, setting the stage for exploitation, miserable working conditions and depressed wages that […]
Bob Sampson
Bob Sampson, a resident of Decatur, earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of John L. O’Sullivan and His Times (Kent State University Press, 2003) and numerous articles on Illinois history for academic journals.
Posted inArts & Culture
Look at U.S. Senators is a valuable, though uneven, political history
Most Illinoisans could only reply with a blank expression if asked to identify the likes of Jesse Burgess Thomas or Richard Montgomery Young or Otis Ferguson Glenn or James M. Slattery. Yet, at one time, each represented the Sucker State in the United States Senate. Political fame is fleeting, a fact I discovered while teaching […]
