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The Pullman Strike occurred when 4,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers reacted to a 28% wage cut by going on a wildcat strike in Illinois on May 11, 1894, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt.
Paternalism in Company Town
The owner of the company, George Pullman was a "welfare capitalist." Firmly believing that labor unrest was caused by the unavailability of decent pay and living conditions, he paid unprecedented wages and built a company town by Lake Calumet (Pullman, Chicago) in what is now the southern part of the city. Instead of living in utilitarian tenements as did many other industrial workers of the day, Pullman workers lived in attractive company-owned houses, complete with indoor plumbing, gas, and sewer systems, in a beautifully landscaped little town with free education through eighth grade and a free public library stocked with an initial gift of 5,000 volumes from Pullman's own personal library.
While the company town did make a high-quality life possible, the system of interrelated corporations that owned and operated it all did presuppose that workers would live within their means and practice basic budgetary prudence. Some workers did find themselves locked into a kind of "debt slavery" (one form of truck system), owing more than they earned to the company stores and to the independent sister company that owned and operated the town of Pullman. Money owed was automatically deducted from workers' paychecks, and a worker who had overspent himself might never see his earnings at all.
It is likely that paternalism, as practiced in the town, also contributed to the workers’ unrest and subsequent strike. Pullman ruled the town like a feudal baron. He prohibited independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings or open discussion. His inspectors regularly entered homes to inspect for cleanliness and could terminate leases on ten days notice. The church stood empty since no approved denomination would pay rent and no other congregation was allowed. Private charitable organizations were prohibited. One of the workers declared,
We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman Hell.
The Strike
During the major economic downturn of the early 1890s, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages. A delegation of workers complained that the corporation that operated the town of Pullman didn't decrease rents, but Pullman "loftily declined to talk with them."
Discontented workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott of all Pullman cars. The strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout. Railroad workers across the nation refused to switch Pullman cars (and subsequently Wagner Palace cars) onto trains. The ARU declared that if switchmen were disciplined for the boycott, the entire ARU would strike in sympathy.
The boycott was launched on June 26, 1894. Within four days, 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars.
On July 5, in an act of arson that may or may not have been related to the strike, the buildings of the World's Columbian Exposition around the Court of Honor were torched. Buildings caught in the blaze included the administration hall, the manufacturer's hall, the electricity hall, the machinery hall, the mining hall, the agricultural hall, and the fair's train station. This increased national attention to the matter and fueled the demand for federal action.
The railroads were able to get Edwin Walker, general counsel for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, appointed as a special federal attorney with responsibility for dealing with the strike. Walker obtained an injunction barring union leaders from supporting the boycott in any way. Debs and other leaders of the ARU ignored the injunction, and federal troops were called into action.
The strike was broken up by United States Marshals and some 2,000 United States Army troops, commanded by Nelson Miles, sent in by President Grover Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage.
Trial
Clarence Darrow agreed to represent Debs and, after a "brilliant" defense, may have been "robbed of a victory" due to the U.S. attorney dropping the prosecution on a charge of conspiracy to obstruct the mail after a juror's illness. Debs was then tried for, and eventually found guilty of violating the court injunction, and was sent to prison for six months.
At the time of his arrest, Debs was not a Socialist. However, during his time in prison, he read the works of Karl Marx. After his release in 1895, he became the leading Socialist figure in America. He ran for President for the first of five times in 1900.
A national commission formed to study causes of the 1894 strike found Pullman's paternalism partly to blame and Pullman's company town to be "un-American." In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, which was annexed to Chicago.
Pullman thereafter remained unpopular with labour, and when he died in 1897, he was buried in Graceland Cemetery at night in a lead-lined coffin within an elaborately reinforced steel-and-concrete vault. Several tons of cement were poured to prevent his body from being exhumed and desecrated by labor activists.
See also
Template:Organized labour portal
- History of the United States (1865-1918)
- John Peter Altgeld
- Sherman Anti-Trust Act
- Norris-LaGuardia Act
- Blacklist
- Detroit, Michigan
Notes
- "Within three days 40,000 railroaders had walked out in a sympathy strike, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt." (Marxian Socialism in the United States, Daniel Bell, page 49)
- Sennett, Richard (1980). Authority. Vintage Books.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) ISBN 0-394-74655-4 - Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 310.
- Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 310.
- Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 310.
- Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 310.
- Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 310-311.
- Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 311.