This Day in Labor History: June 26, 1894. The American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, called for a boycott in solidarity with striking workers at Pullman, Illinois. Let's talk about the Pullman Strike and how the government/corporate alliance brutally crushed it!

The railroad-caused Panic of 1893 was not only emblematic of how corrupt railroads controlled the American economy in the Gilded Age, but how plutocrats expected the poor to sacrifice during hard times.

George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company, which made sleeper cars for the railroads, created his own company town, south of Chicago. He provided workers everything they would need–housing, schools, stores.

He also charged them high rates to live there, would not employ someone if they did not rent from him, and would evict them if they left his employment.

William Carwadine, pastor of the Pullman Methodist Church wrote of the total company domination, “It is a civilized relic of European serfdom” and of Pullman, “He is the King and he demands to the full measure of his capacity all that belongs to the insignia of royalty.”

When the Panic of 1893 hit, Pullman began losing money. His response was to lower wages by 25% while keeping the rent for his housing unchanged.

In protest against this, as well as against working days that sometimes reached 16 hours, Pullman workers attempted to meet with the big boss, but Pullman refused to talk to them and fired three of the leaders.

In response, the Pullman workers went on strike on May 11, 1894.

A young organizer named Eugene Debs started the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893. Debs believed in an industrial union that represented all white workers on the railroad, skilled and unskilled, as the key to improving their conditions.

He didn't really have a radical background. He was a respectable labor leader of the late 19th century railroad brotherhood version who had moved a bit to think about a broader railroad-based unionism.

The ARU tried to move beyond the traditional railroad brotherhoods that represented only elite workers and which had help break the Great Southwest strike against Jay Gould in 1886 by not showing solidarity toward the Knights of Labor who were also striking against the railroads.

That the ARU still discriminated based upon race represented the overwhelming racism of white workers toward non-white competition. Solidarity might extend across the working class, but it hit a brick wall on the issue of race.

Despite this and despite dislike from the brotherhoods, the ARU quickly found its legs, defeated the powerful James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad in a strike, and had 150,000 members within a year.

The ARU did not represent the Pullman strikers. But acting in solidarity with their fellow railroad laborers, the ARU refused to move any Pullman cars

An official boycott began on June 26 and like the 1877 Railroad Strike and the 1886 eight-hour strikes, generated its own momentum as a larger protest against corporate domination.

By June 29, 150,000 workers were on strike and the American train system, vital to the nation’s economy, ground to a halt. American labor leaders saw it as a battle not just against Pullman, but all their corporate enemies.

The Chicago Federation of Labor president said, “We all feel that in fighting any battle against the Pullman company we are aiming at the very head and front of monopoly and plutocracy.”

Union members refused to run trains with Pullman cars which didn’t really affect rail traffic all that much as trains without union cars were let through. When the switchmen were disciplined for not running the Pullman cars, the entire ARU went on strike on June 26.

By June 29, 150,000 workers were on strike and the American train system ground to a halt. Sympathy strikes across the nation damaged rail traffic even more.

Basically, American workers, who rightfully blamed the rail companies for the Panic of 1893, started taking out their frustrations on the rail industry, the cause of many of their sufferings.

President Grover Cleveland had named Richard Olney, general counsel for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway as his Attorney General.

With this kind of fair and impartial background on the matter, in his great wisdom Olney decided to issue an injunction against the ARU support of the strike. Olney was also still doing work on the side for the railroad.

To justify the injunction, Olney used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which while intended to limit monopolies, became a favored tool of industry and government to crush unions instead. The federal courts and Supreme Court supported this interpretation.

When Debs and the ARU refused to obey the injunction, Olney and Cleveland called out the military over the objection of Illinois Governor John Altgeld, who was sympathetic to the strikers.

Commanded by General Nelson Miles, known for his role in crushing the last Native American resistance in the West, 12,000 U.S. troops, aided by U.S. Marshals, cracked down, using the pretense that it interfered with the delivery of the mail.

Miles hated Debs, thought the strikers were defying the federal government, and followed through on his orders with relish.

The next year, Debs proclaimed in a speech, “The American Railway Union challenged the power of corporations in way that had not previously been done.” This was why the government would not let them win.

On July 3, the military entered Chicago, which outraged the previously pretty peaceful strike. Between July 4 and July 7, fires raged through parts of Chicago as workers used them to try and protect themselves from the troops and were just generally extremely angry.

One of these fires burned several buildings from the previous year’s World’s Columbian Exposition. Only July 7, the military fired into the crowd, killing at least 4 strikers and wounding around 20.

The same day, the military arrested Debs and other ARU leaders and the strike began to fall apart. On August 2, the Pullman plant reopened. 13 strikers were killed and 57 wounded during the strike and its repression.

Debs went on trial for conspiracy to obstruct the mail, but these U.S. Attorney dropped these charges, supposedly because a juror got sick, and instead the court sentenced Debs to 6 months for violating the injunction.

Serving his prison sentence, Eugene Debs read Karl Marx, became a socialist, and emerged as perhaps the greatest leader for working-class rights the country had seen to that date.

He would become a 5-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, running in 1920 from prison where he was sentenced for violating the Sedition Act of 1918 when he criticized World War I.

Still enraged by Cleveland’s actions, Altgeld successfully prevented the renomination of Grover Cleveland as the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, although there were other reasons he lost too, including general outrage at Cleveland’s mishandling of the Panic of 1893.

The real lesson of Pullman and so much of American labor history--if labor can't neutralize the political/corporate alliance, it can't win strikes, no matter how militant they might be. This is one of the two key themes of my book A History of America in Ten Strikes.

It's a sobering fact for those who don't want labor to play politics, but there's no way around the reality of both American history and the American present.

Back tomorrow to discuss the founding of the IWW in 1905.