The Train Strike: Labor Day Digest 2/6

     And now for the 2nd in our Labor Day series    

     In 1893, several things happened. The Vienna beef hot dog was first shown to the world, the 1893 World's Fair rolled into town, Carter Harrison was assassinated, Harry Grossman was 4 years away from being born, and an economic Panic hit the country that caused the fortunes of the Pullman Palace Car Company to flounder(and for demand to take a hit as well). This slackening of demand induced George Pullman to cut back on what he was paying his workers. Okay, that seems fair enough, if profits are down, then there simply isn't as much work to give out, and dem's the breaks.

     Except I'm leaving one tiny thing out. Those of you who read my entry about George Pullman know that most of the workers he had in his employ lived in an absolutely massive company town right by the factory. All of the prices and rents in this community were also set by Pullman. Well, when Pullman started losing cash, he cut the wages of all the employees. Not just that, but remember that factory town I told you about? Well, even with the wages being cut, Pullman still charged his workers the same amount of money in rent each and every month. Eventually, this got the workers to the point where they had had enough, and they started to organize.

     At this point, the American Railway Union comes into the picture.  This outfit had been formed in the Summer of 1893 by Eugene Debs, and was already earning a name for itself(having successfully negotiated a deal with the Great Northern Railway in August of that year.)  The ARU aided the situation by calling for a general boycott of all Pullman cars.  As a result 125,000 workers all across the country refused to handle trains carrying Pullman cars.  To combat this, the General Manager's Association(a national federation of 24 Railroad owners) immediately brought in strikebreakers to keep the trains running.  In time, the Federal Government got involved, as President Grover Cleveland considered it his responsibility to keep the mail running.  To further that objective, federal troops were sent in to restore order and get the trains back up and running.

     Eventually, the strike was broken, Eugene Debs was thrown in prison for six months, and everything returned to normal.  However, the strike did leave one important legacy that persists to this day.  In an effort to pacify organized labor in the aftermath of the strike, Congress passed a bill that recognized Labor Day as a national holiday.