September Blog: The Pullman Strike

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the writer/author, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Labor Guild.

There was one labor strike of the 1800’s that significantly molded our labor history and that was the Pullman strike.  As I have said before, depressions are a by-product of the capitalist model as in this case, it was the pretext for the Pullman Strike. This depression (called “Panics “back then) happened just 15 years after the last one, the Panic of 1873-1878. To this point it was the worst depression the country had seen and was caused by over speculation in railroads. Railroads were over-built, with expenses that could not be covered by revenues. When I say over-built, I would like you to think of all the abandoned railroad depots there are today, not only around here, but all over this country. Think of all the remote areas you have been to where railroad beds lie unused, as well as used such as bike/walking trails or serve for bedding under our nation’s power grid.  That’s what I mean by over-built.  However, that was not the only reason for this depression: New mines flooded the market with silver; causing its price to fall. Citizens tried to redeem their silver notes in favor of gold, but the Federal Reserve could not accommodate the gold for silver transfer due to the drop in silver prices. Farmers in particular felt a drop in the wheat and cotton regions. A sharp drop in the stock market which led to panic selling a month later, caused the market to crash. The credit crunch caused 16,000 businesses to fail, including 156 railroads, along with 500 banks. One in six people were unemployed.  The term “robber baron” came out of this period, meaning businessmen making fortunes by questionable and or criminal means.  Does any of this sound familiar? 

George Pullman grew up in western New York and went to work in a country store at 14 and then as an apprentice cabinet maker at 17 where he developed an appreciation of hand carving and woven fabrics.  

He went to work on the Erie Canal where he worked to move houses out of the construction path.  He made his fortune using those skills in Chicago to do the same work, lifting buildings up above the flood plain so that sewer lines could be constructed.  During a long uncomfortable train ride from Buffalo to Westfield, N.Y., Pullman got the idea for making a more comfortable railroad car. 

By 1864 Pullman was rolling out his newest shock absorbed railroad cars, complete with brocade fabric, polished wood carvings and a fold up birth.  The “Pioneer” cost five times more than the traditional cars in use at the time.  Pullman refused to sell his cars to the railroad but rather leased them for fifty cents per fare, allowing the company to pay an eight percent dividend the first year. 

In 1880 land prices in Chicago were extremely expensive as Pullman looked to build a new factory. He decided to build a factory and town fourteen miles away from Chicago and purchased 4000 acres along Lake Calumet. Away from what he called the “baneful influences” (meaning the destructive influences such as drunkenness, fighting, etc.).   

With an estimated value of eight million dollars the brick city was built.  The factory was capable of producing 40 cars per day and the town had a theater, churches, arcade, school, retail shops, both single family as well as row houses all with running water and natural gas.  Some of the larger homes even had bathrooms. We should not forget that this was a “Company Town”, and all aspects of the government were controlled by management.  Workers could not purchase the property; it could only be rented; even the churches had to pay rent.  A home could be rented, depending on size, for between $4.50 for a flat to $100 a month for a house. Workers and their families were under constant watch; for the privilege of working for the “firm”.  You were expected to be an honorable person, free of “baneful” acts.   

Pullman believed if he provided a decent way of life for his employees he would be rewarded with loyal, dedicated, and diligent workers. Unlike some city factory workers who were not reliable, getting drunk, not showing up for work or were transient, where they would go back and forth to their old country or into other factories. However, those that were not compliant with the Pullman rules were evicted with only 10 days’ notice. 

As a consequence of the depression the national wages dropped by 12%.  However, the Pullman workers saw their wages drop by 28% for a 16-hour workday. Where housing profits had dropped by 4% the company could not afford to lower rents on company housing.  The value of the script used at the company store was worth less and the money taken from paychecks for rent left workers with sometimes only pennies.  Remember, people organize around societal necessity. That was the “Thesis” as described by Marx in his analysis of Dialectic Materialism. If you can’t get what you need, then take it. Now the Antithesis, they organized and affiliated with the recently formed (1893) American Railway Union led by Eugene Victor Debs.  

Debs born in Terre Haute, Indiana on Nov. 5, 1855, and left home and school at 16 and went to work on the railroad as a paint scraper and progressed to locomotive fireman.  Laid off in 1873, he left to work as a grocer and never went back to work on the railroad.  In 1880 he began to climb the leadership latter of Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen as secretary treasurer and then ran and was elected to the State Legislature in 1884.  In 1892 he resigned to start the American Railway Union in 1893.  In one of the few successful strikes of the time, Debs in 1893, called for a strike against Northern Railroad and in 18 days received a contract which met all of the Unions demands.  

This led to an increase in membership for the labor union, especially in Pullman, Illinois.  The members sensing the gains from Northern Railroad thought they were in a strong position and formed a committee to ask Pullman to lower their rent. Pullman declined to meet with them, and the next day fired the people that tried to speak with him. That final act from Pullman caused the Union to vote to strike.  

On May 11, 1894, the 3,000 members of the American Railway Union’s Pullman Palace Car Company went out and for the first few weeks the strike went peacefully.  Because the ARU had 465 locals, and 150,000 members Debs offered to send an arbitrator to help secure an agreement. 

Although Debs tried to convince the Local Union to try to cut their best deal through mediation, the Union at Pullman declined, which forced Debs to have the ARU to stop handling Pullman cars and so began the largest strike in U.S. history. 

On June 26 the ARU switchmen refused to handle the Pullman cars and that quickly spread to 250,000 workers in 27 states, sabotaging train tracks and burning Pullman cars, the damage estimated in a government report order by President Cleveland in 1894 by the U.S. Strike Commission States: “The report listed monetary damages sustained during the strike and resulting violence. The cost to the railroads in property damage and the cost of hiring deputy marshals and related expenses was $685,308. The railroads lost an estimated $4,672,916 in earnings. The 3,100 Pullman employees lost about $350,000 in wages. The approximately 100,000 railroad employees involved in the strike lost an estimated $1,389,142 in wages.”      https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/documents/darrow/trialpdfs/Pullman_Strike.pdf,  page 35. 

Which totals $ 7,097,366.  In 2024 dollars equal $ 259,280,809.66 

Attorney General Richard Olney (a director for the Santa Fe and Burlington railroads) issued an injunction.  

Two days later on July 4, Grover Cleveland, armed with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, sent Federal troops over intense protest of then Governor John P. Altgeld.  Altgeld felt the state was perfectly capable of maintaining public safety throughout the strike. 

With 1,936 federal troops, 4,000 national guardsmen, 5,000 extra deputy marshals, 250 extra deputy sheriffs and 3,000 police, totaling 14,186 lawmen, could not contain the eventual violence that broke out on July 7, as assaulted national guard troops opened fire on the strikers leaving 13 strikers dead and wounded 57 with another 71 jailed. 

The Gilded Age is defined as: 1.  To overlay with a thin covering of gold. 2a.   To give money to.   2b. To give an attractive but often deceptive appearance to.  c. Archaic: to make bloody.  During this period all of these were true. 

Eugene Debs spent six months in jail for interfering with commerce under the Sherman Act by blocking the delivery of the U.S. mail. The Federal government purposely integrated U.S. mail cars and connected them to the commercial freight cars, so they could invoke the interstate commerce clause. The Sherman Act was enacted to stop monopolies, check their power and to stop price fixing.  Unfortunately, it became another tool to use against labor. 

At an AFL meeting in Chicago on July 12, Samuel Gompers refused sympathetic action for Debs and the ARU. Think about what would have happened if the AFL had joined the effort?  

 The strike began to wind down and the Pullman operation re-opened on August 2.  Pullman eventually hired back 2,000 workers plus another 800 but not before they swore never again to join a union and signed “yellow dog” contracts. 

This was the first time the courts used Sherman anti-trust on unions; for interference of commerce, in this case the U.S. mail but more precisely the Omnibus Indictment portion of the Act.  This type of injunction prohibited union officials from communicating with their members.  The ramifications of the use of the Sherman Act and the injunctive powers restricted unions until the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. 

The aftermath: The insertion of federal troops and the use of gun fire on strikers against the will of the state was a first.  So incensed was the public and labor over the use of federal troops that, President Cleveland, in 1894 relented and as a peace offering and granted “Labor Day” a national holiday.  Something that Gompers and the AFL had been fighting for since 1892.  

The Pullman company town also came to an end.  The Illinois Supreme Court in 1898 ordered the town sold off, ruling that the Company town was incompatible with the spirit of America. 

The best analysis of this strike I have seen was written in: www.kansasheritage.org/pullman/index.html : 

“The results of the Pullman Strike were both enormous and inconsequential.  They were enormous because the strike showed the power of unified national unions.  At the same time the strike showed the willingness of the federal government to intervene and support the capitalists against unified labor.  The results were inconsequential because for all of the unified effort of the unions the workers did not get their rents lowered.” 

Eugene Debs was represented by Clarence Darrow and though many of the conspiracy charges were dropped did spend six months in jail.  While there he was visited by Victor Buerger, the founder of Socialist Democratic Party of America, who was the first Socialist elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin.  Between his readings and teachings, he had a revision of thinking about labor in the U.S. and emerged as a Socialist.  He was one of the founders of the Wobbly movement (International Workers of the World) and started the Socialist Party of America, which was previously the Socialist Democratic Party, taking over from Buerger. 

After the Pullman strike the turmoil on the railroads resulted in the first of a series of laws that formed the Railway Labor Act of 1926.  In 1888 Congress passed the Arbitration Act which allowed a panel to make non-binding arbitration awards.  Later, the awards became binding in the Erdman Act of 1898 which prohibited “yellow dog” contracts and outlawed discrimination of workers for union activities.  Successor laws made improvements as time went by. The Newland Act of 1913 created a Mediation Board until the federal government nationalized the railroads in 1917.  The Adamson Act of 1916 gave workers an eight-hour day and time and a half for overtime. 

Class consciousness between the rich and the poor always comes down to this central issue. What is the cost of a product being produced and what it is sold for. And most of all, how that difference is divided between owners and workers. This is the conflict Karl Marx spoke of. The dialectic materialism he talks about is simply the trouble of getting a fair shake from the owners because I think by now, we understand that power concedes nothing without a struggle. That struggle is still alive and well today. Like I keep saying. There is nothing wrong with Capitalism that a strong dose of regulation can’t cure.