The Pullman Strike of 1894: causes, events and effects - Essay Example

2 June Outline: The Pullman Strike of 1894: Causes, Events, and Effects Thesis: The Pullman Strike of 1894 is a product of unfair labor practices and conflicts between capitalist and socialist ideology, as well as between the ruling capitalist society and the working class, which resulted in a number of deaths of workers, economic losses, the decline of Pullman’s concept of industrialization and consideration of the legitimacy of workers’ rights and interests. I. Causes of The Pullman Strike A. depression B. unfair labor practices II. Critical Events A. termination of committee members as catalyst to strike B. walkout of workers C. intervention of the American Railway Union (ARU) D. federal Injunction against ARU E. use of federal troops F. the violence of July 7 G. the arrest of Debs and ARU leaders H. the reopening of Pullman on August 2 III. Effects of The Pullman Strike A. deaths B. economic losses C. decline of Pullman’s concept of industrialization D. consideration of the Legitimacy of Workers’ Rights and Interests The Pullman Strike of 1894: Causes, Events, and Effects Pullman Palace Car Company was famous for its sleeper and luxury railcars that it produced; the commuters who were willing to pay a premium could enjoy a more comfortable transportation service there. One of the manufacturing plants was located in Pullman, Illinois. Ladd and Rickman narrated that George M. Pullman had established the town of Pullman as a place where his workers could work and live. This town was conceived and designed on the premise of being a model town for his workers. Graybill describes Pullman as “an amateur moral philosopher”, whose predominant value was “order.” Pullman wanted to attract a large number of skilled, dependable workers with good moral character, who can work in his factory and live in his community (Graybill). The socio-economic and political conditions of the Pullman workers, however, resulted in drastic wage cuts, while rents remained unchanged. On May 10, 1894, the first strike in American history, called the Pullman Strike of 1894, began. This paper depicts and analyzes the major causes, events, and effects of this strike. The Pullman Strike of 1894 is a product of poor economic conditions, unfair labor practices, and conflicts between capitalist and socialist ideology, as well as between the ruling capitalist society and the working class; the strike resulted in a number of deaths, economic losses, decline of the concept of industrialization, and consideration of the legitimacy of workers’ rights and interests. The economic conditions of the country affected businesses across the United States, which, in turn, affected profits and production. In the “Introduction” of the book Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics, Schneirov, Stromquist, and Salvatore illustrate the financial crisis of 1893. They stress that the financial panic in 1893 resulted in a full-scale depression that lasted for five years (3). Unregulated market forces led to overproduction and surplus capacity for factories (Schneirov, Stromquist, and Salvatore 3). The economy reacted with falling demand, prices, wages, “a wave of bankruptcies,” and profits that were below previous-year levels (Schneirov, Stromquist, and Salvatore 3). Graybill describes that this economic crisis soon had a catastrophic impact in the Chicago area. He stresses that this was the time when social welfare such as “Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, food stamps, welfare, and a host of other government programs did not yet exist.” Extended unemployment could easily threaten life, and during the nineteenth century, people could starve to death if they were too poor to buy food (Graybill). In response to the depression, Pullman applied unfair labor practices that his contemporaries also practiced during this time. George Pullman responded to the depression much like many of his contemporaries. Schneirov states that Pullman terminated 75% of his workforce. However, he became concerned that the layoffs might affect his profits and the paternalism that he promoted (Schneirov). In 1894, Pullman took contracts at a loss through overproduction (Schneirov). This allowed him to rehire many of his workers so that by April 1894, 68 percent of the previous personnel were working again for him (Schneirov). In order to compensate for the labor costs, Pullman cut the wages for piece-rates by 28 percent on average, which was too much for his workers (Schneirov). In addition, he did not decrease the rents his workers paid to live in his town, since he wanted to maintain the high living standard of the community’s landowners (Graybill). The volatility in piece-rates and the complaints against several foremen worsened the economic hardships of the workers (Schneirov). The workers responded to these economic woes through creating a committee. On May 7, this committee met with company Vice-President Thomas Wickes, where the former appealed for their wages to be returned to its former levels and for the harassment to stop. Three days after the meeting, these men who met with Wickes were terminated without explanation (Schneirov). This underlined that the company was unwilling to help the workers, and so the latter staged a strike (Schneirov). On May 10, 1894, the Pullman workers walked out from their stations. Afterwards, on May 11, 1894, the Pullman Plant closed. Local leader Thomas Heathcoate clarified the distressed self-assertion that supported their action: “We do not know what the outcome will be, and in fact we do not care much. We do know that we are working for less wages than will maintain ourselves and families in the necessaries of life, and on that one proposition we absolutely refuse to work any longer” (Schneirov). He appealed for their basic human rights for survival. For him, the strike did not ask for higher wages without any reason. Instead, he voiced out the alarmed concerns of workers, who could no longer feed themselves and their families. The strike occurred peacefully, but after a few weeks, the Pullman management did not yield to the demands of the workers and the strikers were frantic for aid. The Pullman workers just joined the nation’s biggest labor organization, the American Railway Union (ARU). A thirty-eight year old ex-official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Eugene Victor Debs, instituted the ARU in 1893. The ARU was a reaction to the decrease in wages and deplorable working conditions of railroad workers that a coalition of railroad managers, the General Managers Association (GMA), started (Schneirov). The GMA was built in 1886, and it provided standard job classifications and wages, hired strikebreakers, and leveled revenue losses that railroads suffered due to strikes (Schneirov). Debs believed that the union should fuse locomotive engineers, brakemen, firemen, and other skilled railroad workers, for them to oppose the actions of GMA (Schneirov). At the June conference of the ARU, Pullman strikers requested the ARU to announce a sympathy boycott of all trains that carried the Pullman cars. Nevertheless, Debs was careful, because he saw a boycott as precarious for the new labor organization (Schneirov). Pullman did not negotiate with his workers, however, against the advice of the Civic Federation of Chicago, a public interest coalition that the city’s leading citizens formed (Schneirov). Pullman was certain that he defended an imperative principle “that private property was an inviolable natural right, unrestrained by social obligations” (Schneirov). His obstinacy forced the delegates to the ARU convention to announce a boycott (Schneirov). The outcome was a “battle to the finish” between two parties: the Pullman Company and the GMA versus the Pullman strikers and the ARU (Schneirov). The boycott also represented the largest sympathy boycott from one group of workers to another (Schneirov). Schneirov noted that the racist sentiments of Pullman strikers, who refused membership with African-American porters, weakened their strike. These porters were two thousand in numbers and would have reduced the need for ARU’s support (Schneirov). Notwithstanding the nonattendance of the porters and the unsatisfactory repudiation of the railroad brotherhoods to hold up the boycott, the ARU closed down “rail traffic in twenty-seven states from Chicago to the west coast” (Schneirov). In Chicago, America’s primary rail hub, strikers also got the support of Mayor John Hopkins (Schneirov). As a retail merchant, Hopkins rented four stores in Pullman’s Arcade in the mid-1880s, but a quarrel made him a harsh enemy of Pullman (Schneirov). This agenda influenced Hopkins to embrace the Pullman’s workers’ cause as his own and even permitted the Chicago police to collect donations for them (Schneirov). Indeed, support for the workers spread across the city. Jane Addams, organizer of Hull House, observed that she went back to Chicago on July 9 to find “almost everyone on Halsted Street wearing a white ribbon, the emblem of the strikers' side” (Schneirov). The strike also extended due to the impartiality of Illinois Governor, John Peter Altgeld, who was elected in 1892 with strong labor support (Schneirov). Altgeld had given pardon to the three Haymarket anarchists. When the strike began, Altgeld declined to send militia to Chicago (Schneirov). The GMA was eager to crush the ARU before it become more powerful than the former. GMA used its economic and political power to influence Washington. President Grover Cleveland’s Attorney, General Richard Olney, who was also a previous railroad attorney, saw the strike as a trial of the constitutional order that anarchy and civil disobedience aimed to undercut (Schneirov). For him, the strike pushed American into the “the ragged edge of anarchy” (Schneirov). The next events led to the federal injunction against the strikers and its bloody consequences. Olney appointed Edwin Walker, a GMA legal counselor, as a special U.S. attorney for Chicago. On July 1, after an occurrence of mayhem in Blue Island, south of the city, Walker informed Olney that law and order broke down in Chicago (Schneirov). On July 2, Olney applied for and obtained from the federal district court in Chicago a blanket injunction that disallowed the ARU leaders to use any means, even peaceful arguments, to encourage railroad workers and sympathizers to tolerate the boycott (Schneirov). The injunction depended on the main principle of late nineteenth century jurisprudence that individuals had an elementary legal right to liberty of contract in the market (Schneirov). Using the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which the court summoned, the federal government had the authority to avert combinations, trusts, or any perverse restraint on such a right in the dominion of interstate commerce; and the courts classified the ARU boycott a scheme in the service of this restraint (Schneirov). On July 4, President Cleveland sent the first detachment of 10,000 federal troops to Chicago despite the strong protests of Governor Altgeld (Schneirov). Eugene Debs and four other ARU leaders were arrested for breaching the injunction. When the federal troops arrived, working-class partisans clashed with them. Soon, Gov. Altgeld was forced to send his militia to stop the skirmish between Chicago citizens and the confrontational bluecoats (Schneirov). The chaos started on July 4, when the mobs started fireworks and overturned rail cars (Ladd and Rickman). The workers used the railcars as blockades to the federal troops (Ladd and Rickman). Moreover, since the blockade disabled the ARU leaders from communicating with the strikers, the latter became more disorganized (Ladd and Rickman). The rioting expanded and on July 7, a large fire broke out and affected seven buildings at the World's Colombian Exposition in Jackson Park (Ladd and Rickman). The standoff between the strikers and the state culminated on July 6, when fires that around 6,000 rioters produced resulted to the destruction of 700 railcars and $340,000 of damages in the South Chicago Panhandle yards (Ladd and Rickman). The outpour of state police officers agitated the strikers further. During this time, “there were 6,000 federal and state troops, 3,100 police, and 5,000 deputy marshals” (Ladd and Rickman). This manpower was insufficient to prevent what happened on July 7, when the strikers assaulted the national guardsmen and the latter fired into the crowd and killed at least four (probably up to thirty) and wounded at least twenty (Ladd and Rickman). The riots continued and two more people were killed in Spring Valley, Illinois (Ladd and Rickman). The killing compelled many strikers to stop the strike, especially when the ARU officials were arrested (Ladd and Rickman). They were later discharged after paying a $10,000 bond (Ladd and Rickman). The strike was rapidly ebbing, so the ARU tried to ask the help of another labor organization through engaging another wave of sympathetic strikes (Ladd and Rickman). The organization turned down the request, and so the ARU abandoned the strike. The ARU asked the Pullman Company to rehire the strikers without discrimination, except those who were already convicted (Ladd and Rickman). The General Managers' Association rejected this request. The strike weakened, and soon, the trains began to operate once more (Ladd and Rickman). The strike became unsustainable for the workers, and on August 2, the Pullman railways started business once more (Ladd and Rickman). The outcomes of the Pullman Strike included mortality and other social and political effects. Thirteen people died, while 53 were seriously wounded (Schneirov). On August 2, the ARU stated that the boycott officially ended (Schneirov). The strike continued in Pullman until September, when two thousand Pullman strikers capitulated without any of their demands being met (Schneirov). The railroads and the Pullman Company fired most of the strikers once they abandoned the union and the former also blacklisted the strike’s leaders (Schneirov). The economic costs of the strike were damaging. Ladd and Rickman reported: “The railroads alone lost an estimated $685,308 in expenses incurred during the strike. However, the railroads lost even more in revenue an estimated $4,672,916 [$120,000,000 in 2009 values]. In addition, 100,000 striking employees lost wages of an estimated $1,389,143”. (Ladd and Rickman). Furthermore, Carter (337) and Hirsch (207) note the decline of the support for Pullman’s noble views of industrialization. Hirsch emphasizes that the strike encapsulated the class conflict due to opposing interests and goals (207). After the strike, Cleveland also issued an investigation of the strike. The Pullman Strike showed the collusion between the state and commerce, but it did showcase the inability of workers to keep silent when their human rights for freedom of expression and to have decent wages were suppressed. The Pullman Strike of 1894 has its roots in the depression, unfair labor practices, and conflicts between capitalist and socialist ideology, as well as between the ruling capitalist society and the working class. The events of the strike showed the power of ruling capitalist society in controlling workers’ conditions. The resulting effects of deaths of workers, economic losses, eclipse of Pullman’s notion of industrialization, and deliberation on the legitimacy of workers’ rights and interests, nevertheless, brought into light the need for unionism and the importance of busting monopolies and trusts among companies. Works Cited Carter, Heath W. “Scab Ministers, Striking Saints: Christianity and Class Conflict in 1894 Chicago.” American Nineteenth Century History 11.3 (2010): 321-349. Print. Graybill, Stuart. “The Pullman Strike of 1894: A Documentary Problem.” 2006. Sacramento City College. 31 May 2012. . Hirsch, Susan E. After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman. Illinois: U of Illinois P, 2003. Print. Ladd, Keith and Greg Rickman. “The Pullman Strike, Chicago, 1894.” 2009. Kansas Heritage. 31 May 2012. < http://www.kansasheritage.org/pullman/index.html>. Schneirov, Richard. “The Pullman Strike and Boycott.” 2007. The Gilded Age. 31 May 2012 < http://dig.lib.niu.edu/gildedage/pullman/events3.html>. Schneirov, Richard, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore. Introduction. The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics. By Schneirov, Stromquist, and Salvatore. Illinois: U of Illinois P, 1999. 1-19. Print. Read More