These days it's rare to find a United States history textbook that does not include a reproduction of Robert Koehler's 1886 painting, The Strike. Indeed, a quick survey of leading college-level textbooks finds that it is the most popular image used to open a chapter on the industrial revolution. What is it about the painting that accounts for this appeal? Making sense of this question requires both a detailed analysis of the painting as well as a discussion of the Gilded Age context in which it was created.

The Strike captures a moment of confrontation as workers pour out of a factory to gather outside the office of their employer. Their many conversations and quizzical looks, not to mention their hurried movements, indicate that the strike has been called only moments before. This stop-action, photographic quality (note the boy running on the right) lends the scene an air of palpable tension, suggesting to the viewer that something dramatic is about to happen.

The painting suggests a work environment so deplorable that even the skilled, sober-minded, American-born workers have walked out.

Unlike most scenes of labor unrest painted or drawn in the late nineteenth century, Koehler presented these workers as sympathetic characters, painting each as an individual rather than as nondescript members of a mob. Many also appear to be of foreign birth, but again Koehler shuns the popular trope of depicting the immigrant worker as a wild-eyed, violent anarchist. The ubiquity of the latter is evidenced in figures 2 and 3 that illustrate two prominent labor clashes in the spring of 1886, the same time Koehler first displayed his painting. Notice the violent postures of the workers in both images as they destroy property and brandish stones and guns. Such scenes suggest workers who are incapable of rational discourse and who reflexibly turn to violence to get their way. In contrast, Koehler presents even the striker speaking to the factory owner—presumably a leader and one especially fired up about the perceived injustice that triggered the walkout—as earnest but calm. Looking upward at the boss (a clever depiction of their upper- and lower-class status), he gestures toward the gathering crowd as if to say, These men will not accept the wage cut, or the speed up, or the dangerous conditions.

This theme of moderation is also conveyed by Koehler's liberal use of square hats on the strikers. Made of paper, they were originally developed by skilled woodworkers, most likely to keep sawdust out of their hair. But nineteenth-century artists placed square hats on any worker they wished to distinguish as skilled, regardless of trade. In so doing, they suggested to viewers their subjects were respectable, hardworking men of American birth who might belong to unions but were less prone to strike than their recently arrived, unskilled, foreign-born counterparts. By including so many of these workers in the crowd, Koehler reveals his pro-labor sympathies. The painting suggests a work environment so deplorable that even the skilled, sober-minded, American-born workers have walked out.

Yet at the same time, The Strike is fraught with tension, indicating that at any moment the workers' composure might dissolve into violence. Clearly, the strike has been called only minutes earlier, as we see workers pouring out of the factory (the only one in the scene with no smoke emanating from its chimney), several of them pulling on their coats and many speaking in clusters, seeking additional information. Behind them dark, foreboding storm clouds loom on the horizon. Most notable is the worker in the foreground stooping to pick up a rock. Maybe he is only a moment away from hurling it at the boss, an act that will surely trigger more violence and lead to clashes with the police or militia. Maybe he will opt for an act of symbolic violence and throw it through a window. Maybe he will simply toss it up and down in his hand as a dramatic but ultimately harmless show of anger. Similarly, we see in the center foreground a woman trying to calm down another angry worker, presumably her husband. As with the worker picking up the rock, the viewer is left hanging, wondering whether peace or violence will prevail. Will she succeed in deterring him from a rash act? Koehler provides no answer.

This theme of pervasive tension and anxiety over what will happen next is also furthered by the mother with two children at the far left. Apprehension verging on terror is evident on the faces of the mother and of child standing next to her. Here Koehler is presenting a familiar element in Gilded Age labor-capital conflict imagery—the powerless and vulnerable wife and children standing on the edge of a scene dominated by male workers, police, and employers. The message in this set piece is that the fate of innocent women and children hang on the decisions of men. As indicated in the accompanying examples (see figures 4 and 5) from Puck, the vast majority of labor-capital conflict scenes took the side of the employer and thus criticized the deluded American worker for shirking his primary responsibility of providing for his family in favor of pursuing a misguided strike or boycott. Note how the woman in figure 4 pleads with her husband to resist the power of the power-hungry labor agitator. Figure 5 presents an even starker scene of half-starved women and children victimized by their husbands' succumbing to the wily deceptions of the union leader. Again, as with his positive depiction of the gathering workers, we see how Koehler departs from a dominant trope. While he presents the mother and children as powerless and vulnerable people who will likely suffer the consequences of the action unfolding, he leaves open the question of culpability. If the workers persist in their strike, their families will suffer for lack of income for food and rent. But they will also suffer if the strikers relent before the capitalist and accept his wage cut.

This theme of ambiguity extends to Koehler's depiction of the factory owner. On the one hand, he appears like Ebenezer Scrooge (replete with a nervous Bob Cratchit figure behind him), standing stiff and emotionless as the worker below him makes his appeal. Note also how Koehler's creation of two distinct worlds—the hardscrabble, grimy landscape of the workers' world and the elegant, ordered space of the factory owner—serves to heighten the sense of widening class distinctions and intensifying class conflict. From this perspective, the viewer is inclined to see him as the quintessential cold-hearted capitalist. There seems little chance that he will accede to the workers' demands. And yet, there he is, willing to come before his workers and listen. Perhaps his grim countenance reflects not hostility toward his workers, but the great dilemma he faces: he might want to agree to the workers' demands that he restore a wage cut, or reduce the hours of labor, but doing so would raise his costs and imperil his business in an age of intense competition. Again, Koehler leaves his audience wondering.

This uncertainty in the painting over both what is about to happen and which side is in the right —workers or employer—illuminates the dilemmas posed by rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Many people agreed that social turmoil threatened the future of the republic, but they disagreed over its causes and, especially, its solutions. Koehler presents us with workers who appear hardworking and worthy of sympathy. Yet, his inclusion of the man picking up the rock suggests that he is acknowledging a troubling tendency among some workers to embrace radicalism and violence. Similarly, Koehler presents a factory owner willing to talk to his disgruntled workers, suggesting that not all capitalists were greedy and heartless. Yet the man's stern gaze and the rough landscape of the workers' world (and the fact that they have just called a strike) serves as an admission that some capitalists bear responsibility for the current labor-capital strife. Koehler is content only to highlight this dilemma and he declines to offer a solution.

http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-11/no-01/lessons/