July 20, 1894: The Pullman Strike Fails

July 20, 1894: The Pullman Strike fails, marking a turning point in American labor law.

There had been a nationwide railroad strike in 1877, and the Homestead Strike of 1892 affected the steel and coal industries. But there had never been a strike as big as this one, in any country, anywhere in the world.

George Pullman designed the Pullman sleeping car for railroads in 1862, and got rich. In 1880, he founded a "company town," Pullman, south of Chicago -- the city that poet Carl Sandburg would later call, among other things, "player with railroads and the nation's freight handler."

Pullman's workers lived in the town. The good: The homes were well-built, clean, and had modern amenities like electricity and indoor plumbing. There were good schools and retail stores. And Pullman showed as little race prejudice as American society would allow at the time: Although black men could only work as porters on the cars he built, they could live side-by-side with the white employees in the Town of Pullman.

The bad: Pullman paid his workers a pittance, probably figuring he could, seeing as how his employees had housing that they didn't have to pay rent on. The ugly: His employees were forbidden from leaving the town to shop elsewhere, and couldn't seek jobs elsewhere. If it was discovered that a Pullman employee had gotten a job at, say, Marshall Field's department store, that employee was evicted, and had to find new housing immediately.

The low wages were tolerable, until the Panic of 1893 sent America into the most devastating economic depression the country had yet known. Production was lost, because the railroads weren't buying as many train cars. So Pullman cut wages, but didn't cut the prices of goods at his town's stores.

Limiting employees to shopping only at stores that the company owned meant that, in some cases (not this one), they didn't get paid in money so much as in credit; and that, if they didn't produce enough, they were actually in debt to the store.

In 1947, country singer Merle Travis wrote "Sixteen Tons," imagining a coal miner who had to shovel eighteen tons a day to "break even" at the company store. With Tennessee Ernie Ford singing it in a basso profundo voice that made it a Number 1 hit in 1955, the chorus went:

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go:
I owe my soul to the company store.

Eugene Debs, a young Chicago lawyer, led the American Railway Union (ARU), and led the Pullman workers on a strike that began on May 11, 1894, and a boycott that began on June 26: ARU members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars. By June 30, 125,000 workers on 29 railroads, all over the country, had walked off the job in "sympathy strikes."

Railroads hired strikebreakers, some of them black, in order to provoke the striking white workers. And the nation's newspapers, by and large run by conservative men, accused the strikers of Communism, anarchism, and anything else they could think of that sounded bad.

The U.S. Attorney General, Richard Olney, a former railroad attorney, told the President, Grover Cleveland, that he could intervene with federal troops, because the railroads being shut down meant that the mail wasn't getting through. Cleveland gave Olney the go-ahead to get a federal injunction barring union leaders from supporting the strike, and demanding that the strikers get back to work or be fired.

Debs told the workers to ignore it: "Strong men and broad minds only can resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly. Do not be frightened at troops, injunctions, or a subsidized press. Quit and remain firm. Commit no violence. The American Railway Union will protect all, whether member or not, when the strike is off."

Debs wanted to go further: He wanted a general strike, with every person in Chicago who belonged to any labor union to walk off the job. But Samuel Gompers, the head of the American Federation of Labor, the nation's largest labor-rights organization, opposed the move. Gompers had considerably more influence than Debs at this point, and Debs had to fold on this matter.

On July 7, strikers turned against Debs' demand for no violence, and set fire to boxcars. Pullman had asked for the Illinois National Guard, and got it, and the Guardsmen fired on the strikers. This would be the biggest act of violence during the strike, which would eventually claim the lives of 70 strikers.

With the papers drumming up further opposition to the strike, the public turned against it. An editorial in The New York Times called Debs "a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race." The strike ended on July 20, and Debs was arrested. Despite a vigorous defense by Clarence Darrow, launching him on a career as the foremost American defense attorney of his time, Debs was found guilty of contempt of court for violating the injunction, and served 6 months in prison.

The strike did no good for anybody. With the depression started by the Panic of 1893 ongoing, President Cleveland's popularity dropped further. Because he was a Democrat, voters nationwide turned against his party, and the Republicans won the biggest landslide in Congressional election history in 1894. Cleveland stood no chance of winning another election in 1896, and didn't run. By the time he died in 1908, his historical reputation had improved somewhat.

Olney, however, has gone down in history as one of the least-regarded Attorneys General. In 1895, Cleveland appointed him U.S. Secretary of State, upon the death of that office's holder, Walter Gresham, and held that post through the end of the Cleveland Administration. He died in 1917.

Debs became a full-fledged Socialist, and would be nominated for President by the Socialist Party 5 times. In 1912, he got 6 percent of the popular vote, 918,000 in total, but only finished 4th In 1920, despite once again being in prison, he finished 3rd, getting 3.4 percent, 913,000. He died in 1926.

But no one's public position dropped more than that of George Pullman. Cleveland appointed a commission to investigate the strike and its surrounding events. It described Pullman's company town as "un-American," and condemned him for creating the economic hardships that led to the strike, and for his dictatorial refusal to negotiate.

The State of Illinois filed suit against Pullman the man, over Pullman the town. On October 19, 1897, with the case yet to go to trial, Pullman died of a heart attack. He was 66 years old. The following year, the Supreme Court of Illinois ruled that the Pullman Company had to divest its ownership of the town. It was annexed to the City of Chicago, and much of it is now preserved as a National Monument, honoring the rail industry and the American labor movement.

*

July 20, 1894 was a Friday. This was the birthdate of Wiley Rutledge, who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1943 until his death in 1949.

Baseball was then the only team sport in America that dared to be openly professional, and the 12-team National League was the only major league. These games were played on that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Boston Beaneaters, 12-1 at the South End Grounds in Boston. This was the 1st game played at the 3rd South End Grounds, after the 2nd one had burned down on May 15. The Beaneaters became known as the Braves in 1912.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-2 at Eastern Park in Brooklyn. Still using the name they got when several of their players got married before the 1887 season, the Grooms would officially be the Dodgers in 1911.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 12-8 at Boundary Park in Washington. Griffith Stadium would be built on the site of Boundary Park in 1911. Both of these teams would be contracted out of the NL after the 1899 season.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6 at League Park in Cincinnati. Crosley Field would be built on the site of League Park in 1912.

* The Louisville Colonels beat the Cleveland Spiders, 7-4 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. Both of these teams would also be contracted out of the NL after the 1899 season.

* The Chicago Colts, who would become the Cubs in 1903, and the St. Louis Browns, who would become the Cardinals in 1900, were not scheduled to play. The strike appears not to have affected any team's schedule, not even that of the one actually in Chicago.