J. F. Miller "Report to Joseph Wood, General Manager, Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, on the 1894 Strike of the American Railroad Union" (222 p) on Microfilm

The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike and boycott that took place from May 11, 1894 to August 1894.



The Pullman Palace Car Company built railroad cars at its main factory just south of Chicago, Illinois, in the company town of Pullman. The majority of Pullman employees lived in the company town. As a company town, all housing, shops, churches, libraries, and other civic institutions were owned by the Pullman Company, which set the rates of rent, groceries, and other amenities. After the Panic of 1893 and the ensuing financial depression, the Pullman Company faced decreased demand for their product and in response slashed wages by about 25 percent while making no changes to the cost of living for their employees. The employees, fearing starvation, approached the owner of the company, George Pullman, to try to negotiate a solution. However, Mr. Pullman declined to make any changes or to engage in arbitration. In response, the Pullman employees walked off the job on May 11, 1894. Although only about 35 percent of the Pullman employees were represented by the American Railway Union [ARU] at the time of the walkout, the ARU and its president, Eugene V. Debs, promised to support the Pullman manufacturing workers in any action they took. Notably, the ARU did not extend the same courtesy to the African-American sleeping car porters employed by the Pullman Company.



To support the Pullman employees who walked off the job, the ARU launched a nationwide boycott in which ARU members refused to run any train containing a Pullman car. By the end of June 1894, over 125,000 railroad workers on 29 different lines had walked off the job. The hope was that the railroad companies would force Pullman to compromise with his employees. Instead, the railroad companies coordinated their response, made sure that every train, passenger or freight, was pulling a Pullman car, and began hiring strikebreakers.



The ARU members on strike had agreed to continue to operate trains carrying U.S. mail, if there were no Pullman cars attached to the same train. The railroad companies' decision to add a Pullman car to every train meant that U.S. mail was not being delivered, and gave the federal government a pretext to intervene. Additionally, there was mounting public pressure to intervene as the strike and the boycott effectively crippled all railroads west of Chicago and rioting, vandalism, and looting became associated with the actions of the strikers. In early July, President Grover Cleveland sent troops to Chicago to break up the strike. At the same time, Eugene V. Debs was placed under injunction by circuit court judges, preventing him or other union leaders from communicating with their members. Debs, who had been urging restraint and decrying violence to his members, was suddenly unable to legally communicate with them and dissuade them from rash actions.



The arrival of the federal troops in Chicago on July 3, 1894 infuriated the strikers, and they and their sympathizers responded by destroying railroad property, overturning railcars, and creating barriers to block the troops from reaching the train yards. Violence exploded in the south side of Chicago, and at rail yards around the country, as the strikers and the federal troops clashed. Thirty strikers were killed, fifty-seven were wounded, over $80 million in property damage was caused, and the strikers had lost more than $1 million in wages.



Thanks to the intervention of the federal government, the strike was effectively broken by mid-July, and the Pullman employees returned to their jobs in August after agreeing to sign a pledge that they would never again try to join a union.