AceHistoryDesk – Today in History – Turn-of-the-century progressive reformer John Peter Altgeld was born in Germany on December 30, 1847. Despite his humble origins and a father who saw no benefit in education, Altgeld read law and was admitted to the bar in Anderson County, Missouri. There, he committed himself to politics and served as city attorney of Savannah, Missouri (1872-73) and county prosecutor (1874-75).

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Altgeld moved to Chicago in 1875 and continued his legal and political career, next getting elected to the Cook County Superior Court (1886-91). He won the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor in 1892.

However, he is most famous for his June 1893 pardon of the three surviving bombers involved in the May 1886 Haymarket Riot, a labor protest in support of the eight-hour day. The protest had escalated into a violent confrontation in which seven policemen were killed. Altgeld, whose law partner was Clarence Darrow, argued that the trial had been unfair because the judge was prejudiced and the jury stacked.

As governor, Altgeld made improvements in state institutions and passed reforms in the penal and legal systems, as well as in early child and women’s labor legislation.

A year later, in May 1894, Altgeld refused to order the militia to intervene in the Pullman railroad strike when the American Railway Union protested a reduction in salary without an accompanying reduction in the cost of company-owned housing and other expenses.

Ultimately, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to suppress the strike, exercising his authority to protect mail and interstate commerce. Altgeld’s Progressive Era-legislation and commitment to the laboring classes made him a hero to activists, workers, and farmers, and an enemy of big business.

Using income derived from his legal work, Altgeld had successfully amassed a small fortune by investing in real estate and construction in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, he suffered financial disaster in the late nineteenth century and lost almost his entire estate in 1900.

Learn More

• For more information about the history of American reform, labor, and politics, see these collections:
  • African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection
  • American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I
  • A Century of Lawmaking for a new Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
  • National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
  • Women’s Suffrage: Pictures of Suffragists and their Activities
• Search Chronicling America, a collection of historic American newspapers, for articles related to labor reform and other workers’ issues. Start with the special features on the Haymarket Affair and Pullman Porters.
• See interior and exterior views of a variety of Pullman railroad cars. Search on the term Pullman in Denver Public Library Digital Collectionsto see, for example, the interior of the Denver & Salt Lake railroad cars of about 1913, and the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad’s “Tryphosa” Pullman of 1906. Also see the uniform of a Pullman railroad conductor.
• Search on the term Pullman in the Detroit Publishing Companycollection for additional images.

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