Tracy High School
Social Studies Department
US History
2014-2015
Strikes DBQ
Were strikes successful or not successful in improving working conditions for workers?
Source 1
The town of Pullman, Illinois, just south of Chicago, had been regarded as a model industrial community. Its creator
and proprietor, George Pullman, had manufactured luxurious “sleeping cars” for railroads since 1881. He built his
company as a self-contained community with the factory at the center, surrounded by modern cottages, a library,
churches, an independent water supply, and even its own cemetery. The Pullman Palace Car Company deducted
rent, library fees, and grocery bills, from each worker’s weekly wages. In good times, workers enjoyed a decent
livelihood, although many resented Pullman’s autocratic control of their daily affairs.
When times grew hard, the company cut wages by as much as one-half, in some cases down to less than $1 a day.
Charges for food and rent remained unchanged. Furthermore, factory supervisors sought to make up for declining
profits by driving workers to produce more. In May 1894, after Pullman fired members of a committee that had
drawn up a list of grievances, workers voted to strike.
Pullman workers found their champion in Eugene V. Debs, who had recently formed the American Railway Union
(ARU) to bring all railroad workers into one organization. Just one month before the Pullman workers voted to
strike, Debs and the ARU had scored a victory over the Great Northern rail line. Debs now advised caution, but
delegates to an ARU convention voted to support a nationwide boycott of all Pullman cars. This action soon turned
into a sympathy strike by railroad workers across the country. Support for the strike was especially strong in the
western states.
Compared to the Uprising of 1877, the orderly Pullman strike at first produced little violence. ARU officials urged
strikers to ignore all police provocations and hold their ground peacefully. But Attorney General Richard Olney,
claiming that the ARU was disrupting mail shipments (actually Debs had banned such interference), issued a blanket
injunction against the strike. On July 4, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago, over Illinois
Governor John Peter Altgeld’s objections. After a bitter confrontation that left 13 people dead and more than fifty
wounded, the army dispersed the strikers. For the next week, railroad workers in twenty –six other states resisted
federal troops, and a dozen more people were killed. On July 17, the strike finally ended when federal marshals
arrested Debs and other leaders. Debs was sentenced to six months in jail.
Faragher, John Mack. Et al. Out of Many. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011.
Source 2
Chicago was a hotbed of labor radicalism. Anarchists (people who believe in no government) infiltrated some trade
unions in Chicago and leaped aboard the bandwagon of a national movement centered in that city for a general strike
on May 1, 1886, to achieve the eight-hour workday. Chicago police were notoriously hostile to labor organizers and
strikers, so the scene was set for a violent confrontation.
The May 1st showdown coincided with a strike at the McCormick farm machinery plant in Chicago. A fight outside
the gates on May 3rd brought a police attack on the strikers. Anarchists then organized a protest meeting at
Haymarket Square on May 4th. Toward the end of the meeting, the police suddenly arrived in force. When
someone threw a bomb into their midst, the police opened fire. When the wild melee was over, 50 people lay
wounded and 10 dead—six of them policemen.
This affair set off a wave of hysteria against labor radicals. Police in Chicago rounded up hundreds of labor leaders.
Eight anarchists went on trial for conspiracy to commit murder—though no evidence turned up to prove that any of
them had thrown the bomb. All eight were convicted, four were hanged on November 11, 1887. The case bitterly
divided the country. Many workers, civil libertarians, and members of the middle class branded the verdicts judicial
murder. But the majority of Americans applauded them.
The Knights of Labor were caught in this anti-labor backlash. Although the Knights of Labor had nothing to do
with Haymarket affair, Powderly’s opposition to the wage system sounded suspiciously like anarchism.
Membership in the Knights of Labor plummeted from 700,000 in the spring of 1886 to fewer than 100,000 by 1890.
Murrin, John. et. al. Liberty, Equality, and Power. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2004.
Source 3
Wage cuts in the silver and lead mines of northern Idaho led to one of the bitterest conflicts of the decade. To put a
brake on organized labor, mine owners had formed a “protective association,” and in March 1892, they announced a
lower wage scale throughout the Coeur d’Alene district. After the miners’ union refused to accept the cut, the
owners locked out all union members and brought in strikebreakers. After three months of stalemate, union
members loaded a railcar with explosives and blew up a mine. Strikebreakers fled while mine owners appealed to
the Idaho governor for assistance. A force of 1,500 state and federal troops occupied the district. Strikebreakers
were brought back in, and more than 300 union members were herded into bullpens, where they were kept under
unsanitary conditions for several weeks before their trial. Ore production meanwhile resumed, and by November,
when troops were withdrawn, the mine owners declared a victory. But the miners’ union survived, and most
members eventually regained their jobs. “We have made a fight that we are proud of and propose to continue it to
the end,” one striker declared. The following spring, Coeur d’Alene miners sent delegates to Butte, Montana, where
they helped form the Western Federation of Miners, which soon became one of the strongest labor organizations in
the nation.
Faragher, John Mack. Et al. Out of Many. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011.
Source 4
Despite these warnings, the railroad corporations were unprepared for the Great Uprising of 1877, the first
nationwide strike. The strike began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where workers protesting a 10 percent wage cut
uncoupled all engines. No trains would run, they promised, until wages were restored. Within a few days, the strike
had spread along the railroad routes to New York, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, and San Francisco. In
all these cities, workers in various industries and masses of the unemployed formed angry crowds, defying armed
militia ordered to disperse them by any means. Meanwhile, strikers halted train traffic. They seized carloads of
food for hungry families, and in St. Louis workers even took over the city’s administration.
The rioting persisted for nearly a week, spurring business leaders to call for the deportation, arrest, or execution of
strike leaders. Law and Order Leagues swept through working-class neighborhoods and broke up union meetings.
Fearing a “national insurrection,” President Hayes set a precedent by calling in the U.S. Army to suppress the strike.
In Pittsburgh, federal troops equipped with semi-automatic machine guns fired into a crowd, and killed more than 20
people. By the time the strike finally ended, more than 100 people were dead.
Memories of the Uprising of 1877, haunted business and government officials for decades, prompting the creation of
the National Guard and the construction of armories in working-class neighborhoods. Workers also drew lessons
from the events. Before the end of the century, more than 6 million workers would strike in industries ranging from
New England textiles to southern tobacco factories to western mines. The labor movement also expanded its sphere
of influence to the halls of city government. While the Farmers’ Alliance put up candidates in the South and Plains
states, workers launched labor parties in dozens of industrial towns and cities.
Faragher, John Mack. Et al. Out of Many. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011.
Source 5
Members of the Amalgamated Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, the most powerful union of the AFL, had carved out ad
admirable position for themselves in the Carnegie Steel Company. Well paid, proud of their skills, the unionists
customarily directed their unskilled helpers without undue influence of company supervisors. Determined to gain
control over every stage of production, Carnegies and his chairman, Henry C. Frick, decided not only to lower
wages but to break the union.
In 1892, when the Amalgamated’s contract expired, Frick announced a drastic wage cut. He also ordered a wooden
stockade built around the factory, with groves for rifles and barbed wire on top. The workers went on strike in late
June. When Homestead’s city government refused to assign policy to disperse them, Frick sent in a heavily armed
private army to do the job. After a day-long gun battle between strikers and the hired army, the governor sent the
Pennsylvania National Guard to restore order. Carnegie’s factory reopened, with strike breakers doing the work.
After four months, the union was forced to concede a crushing defeat, not only for itself but in effect for all steel
workers. The Carnegie Company reduced its work force by 25 percent, lengthened the workday, and cut wages 25
percent for those who remained on the job. If the Amalgamated Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, known throughout the
industry as the “aristocrats of labor,” could be brought down, less-skilled workers could expect little from the
corporate giants. Within a decade, every major steel company operated without union interference.
Faragher, John Mack. Et al. Out of Many. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011.