Picket lines and parades: labour and urban space in early twentieth-century London and Chicago

Garment strikes in London and Chicago provide a setting to consider the role of the city in early twentieth-century labour struggles. While strikers in the two cities shared similar experiences and confronted similar imaginings of the city, they faced different built environments. The comparative approach thus highlights the importance of considering spatial dynamics when studying strikers’ strategies. Journalists’ and other onlookers’ responses to picket lines, parades or mass meetings reflected normative understandings and expectations of workers’ behaviour, especially if those workers were young, women or ethnic minorities. The article considers the ways in which strikers in early twentieth-century London and Chicago transgressed contemporary perceptions of their cities by appropriating city space and by subverting behavioural norms in spaces where they did belong. I argue that the strikers drew attention to their struggles via their atypical use of the city streets and that occupying these spaces helped unify the strikers and thus strengthen the strike.