PBS Airs Chicago: City Of The Century

"The film tells how innovation, ingenuity, determination and ruthlessness created empires in what was a marshy wasteland and describes the hardships endured by millions of working men and women whose labor helped a capitalist class reinvent the way America did business... But even as City of the Century revels in Chicago's triumphs, it delves into the heart of Chicago's many painful struggles. Nowhere else in the world did tremendous wealth and devastating poverty exist so closely side by side. While the city boasted some of the era's most forward-thinking social reformers, it was renowned for its plundering capitalists and corrupt local officials. In 1871 it was the victim of one of the most devastating fires in history, an inferno that killed 300 people and made 100,000 others homeless. In 1886, it was the site of the Haymarket incident, the tragic terrorist act that unleashed the first redhunt in American history."