The Pullman Strike of 1894 began on this day in history
George Pullman was a rail tycoon in 19th century Chicago, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company
His workers mostly lived in a Company-owned neighbourhood called Pullman, on the South Side of Chicago. So George Pullman wasn’t just the railroad workers’ boss – he was their landlord, too
When a depression hit in 1893, Pullman simultaneously docked his workers’ wages while keeping their rents at the same level and charging extortionate utility rates. As this cartoon shows, Pullman was making life impossible for his own employees
This was the last straw: it was time to strike.
The Pullman strikers appealed to support from the American Railway Union, founded by Eugene Debs the year before. And the Union got behind them: when Pullman rail-workers walked out, the ARU called for a nationwide boycott of Pullman train cars.
The strike was huge: 125,000 workers joined the boycott in a few days, and all traffic on the 24 railroads out of Chicago was stopped
But then the government got involved, and sent the army into Chicago. With the support of police and local militia, the military killed 34 strikers. Eugene Debs, meanwhile, was arrested
The Pullman Strike had been broken with an iron fist
But the American labor movement soldiered on. Debs became a socialist in prison and went on to build up the early US socialist movement – he ended up running for President five times on a socialist ticket
And the extraordinary working-class solidarity shown at Pullman was repeated, time and again, through the 20th century, from Chicago to New York, Seattle to Pennsylvania.
Forever and always, there is power in the union
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