Looking Backward: An Exhibit of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward Main Menu Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy Overview of this Project Outlining the Project's Scope Boston 1887 The Stagecoach Analogy The Knights of Labor United in Boston Bellamy's Boston The Utopic Boston of the Year 2000 Utopic Boston Utopic Characteristics The Capitalist America of Today Final Thoughts on Looking Backward Sources Looking Back: The Process

Boston 1887

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Tensions were high in Boston as conditions and wages for workers reached an abysmal state.  Men, women, and even children worked excruciating hours to be compensated poorly, successfully oppressing the individual into a poor state of life and social standing.  To fight this, workers began to organize into unions, conducting strikes and protests in order to proposition for the conditions and wages they thought were fair.  


Julian West, the main character of Bellamy's novel, experiences the effects of the Labor Issue in the construction of house, "The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other trades concerned in house building." (Bellamy 9)

This is a turning point, not only for Boston, but for America in general.  These early unions would go on to shape labor in America for years to come.  An 8-hour workday with weekends (or Sunday) off became a staple demand for these unions, one that would eventually be granted and would go on to influence the accepted workday of Americans for generations.  

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  1. Boston 1887 Evan Ratermann

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  1. The Knights of Labor

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