Structuring Poverty in the Windy City: Autonomy, Virtue, and Isolation in Post-Fire Chicago

The Great Chicago Fire in October 1871 destroyed 2,600 acres and left tens of thousands without housing, food, fuel, or clothing. In the aftermath the mayor handed all relief duties to the commercial elite at the Chicago Relief and Aid Society. This was, as Joel E. Black’s provocative study shows, a critical decision—one that ensured that Chicago’s physical rebuilding would be coupled with an equally ambitious rebuilding of the city’s poor, as reformers, social scientists, and journalists s...