United States 1900

Synopsis

The roots of the National Civic Federation (NCF) are found in the response to the Panic of 1893, with its massive unemployment and social dislocation. Late in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, William T. Stead, an English evangelical clergyman and editor with a local following, and Ralph Montgomery Easley, an energetic young newspaperman, founded a civic federation. By 1894 the Chicago Civic Federation (CCF), aimed at improving municipal government, ameliorating social evils and slums, and relieving the poor, had focused on industrial conciliation. Its tripartite board of conciliation, comprised of representatives of business, labor, and the professions, unsuccessfully attempted to mediate the Pullman Strike of 1894; the board concluded that legal reform was needed and determined to work for the passage of an industrial arbitration law. The CCF sponsored conferences on issues such as industrial arbitration, primary elections, foreign policy, and the trust question. The early...