The Pullman Strike

In 1894 the model town of Pullman became the storm center for one of the classic labor struggles in American social history.

A recession gripped the nation's economy beginning in 1893. Orders for Pullman cars fell off and management began a program of lay-offs and wage cuts. The cuts, applied not to managerial employees but only to the hourly workers, averaged 25 percent. Since Pullman wages were close to the subsistence level, it was a recipe for disaster.

The situation was all the more desperate for the workers who lived in the town, because the company refused to lower the rents. Even more galling, the company made sure it collected the rents-right out of the pay!

The company's control of the town (and the people in it) was close to absolute. Even the Green Stone Church was the company's property. Its use was rented out for religious services for a fee. Pullman expected the church building to earn the usual six percent return on investment. Indeed, George Pullman, expected the church building to be rented by various denominations, their services to operate much like the shifts in his shops.

Pullman described his intentions in practical business terms:

"That such advantages and surroundings made better workmen by removing from them the feeling of discontent and desire for change which so generally characterize the American workman; thus protecting the employer from loss of time and money consequent upon intemperance, labor strikes, and dissatisfaction which generally result from poverty and uncongenial home surroundings."

But Pullman failed to follow his own prescription. His wage cut policy during the winter of 1893-94 certainly induced "poverty and uncongenial home surroundings."

The Union Is Organized
Their recourse was to begin the formation of a local union of the American Railway Union in the Pullman shops. There were only about 3,300 workers left on the payroll in May of 1894, many of them on short hours.

A 46-member committee from the union was sent to demand that Pullman rescind the cuts. They were met by Vice-President Thomas J. Wickes, and briefly addressed by George Pullman. He refused any action on the wage cuts, but promised to look into complaints about the behavior of foremen and other matters.

But, the very next day, May 10, 1894, three members of the committee were discharged. A mass meeting of the Pullman workers voted to strike. Picket lines were set up and production halted.

The strike wore on. George Pullman simply left town immediately after the meeting with the committee, heading to his summer home on the New Jersey seashore. In June, a national convention of the American Railway Union (ARU) took place in Chicago.

The convention sent a committee to see Wickes and propose arbitration of the dispute. Wickes refused.

Rebuffed in their efforts to resolve the dispute through arbitration, the ARU tried a new tactic. They voted to refuse to work any train that carried a Pullman car after June 26, unless the company had changed its position on arbitration.

Instead, the General Managers of the 24 railroads terminating in Chicago met with Wickes and agreed unanimously to support the Pullman Company and defy the ARU. Rail workers responded to the boycott call and would surely have prevailed in a matter of days, had not the Federal Government intervened on management's behalf.

Friends in High Places
Acting at the behest of his Attorney General, a former railroad attorney named Richard Olney, President Cleveland appointed a special counsel to deal with the strike on the grounds that U.S. mails were being impeded. Indeed they were, because the railroads were deliberately hooking Pullman cars to mail trains.

Cleveland's choice for the special counsel was none other than Edward Walker, the attorney for the Milwaukee Railroad. Walker hired 4,000 strikebreakers and made them deputy marshals armed with badge and gun.

Great masses of sympathetic workers, particularly in the Chicago area, responded by attacking the trains.

There were casualties, trains were torched, and 12,000 federal troops deployed (approximately half the U.S. army), ostensibly to keep the peace, but surely to break the boycott.

The Strike Ends
An injunction was secured under which ARU president Eugene V. Debs and other leaders were sentenced to jail. On July 18, Pullman announced it would reopen the shops and hire only persons who would sign a "yellow dog" contract promising never to join a union while a Pullman employee.

Article courtesy of The Illinois Labor History Society, 28 E. Jackson, Chicago, IL 60604, (312) 663-4107.

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