"To the Ragged Edge of Anarchy": The 1894 Pullman Boycott
Author(s): Richard Schneirov
Source: Magazine of History, Vol. 13, No. 3, The Progressive Era (Spring, 1999), pp. 26-30
Published by: Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163289
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Magazine of History.
http://www.jstor.org
Richard
the
"To
Ragged
The
Tlhe
Schneirov
strikes
American
workers
have
undertaken.
From
26
June
to mid-July
the boycott closed the rail arteries of half the United
The Pullman boycott
States, from Chicago to theWest Coast.
culminated two decades of intensifying labor conflict in the last
quarter
of
Coming
amidst
DC
ton,
the
by
contested
nineteenth
century,
depression,
a series
workers,
unemployed
in the bituminous
strikes
on
especially
worst
the nation's
coal
the
of
and
large
and
industry,
railroads.
fright and foreboding
of
the nation.
the Pullman
surmounted,
In
through the ranks ofthe
the memorable
of U.S.
phrase
of
General
Attorney
Though federal land grants helped build the railroads, most of
the financing derived from the sale of stock on the newly formed New
York Stock Exchange. As the first large corporate enterprises of
national
scope,
of
from
stock,
Richard Olney, the strike seemed to have brought the nation "to the
ragged edge of anarchy" (1).
the world's
America
In their frenzied expansion
called
roads
forth
structing
locomotives,
In the
them.
railroad
1880s
construction.
and
the
iron
three-quarters
The
goods
capital
foundries
building
power
by
in mid-century,
beginning
a world-class
of iron and steel mills,
economic
greatest
and
ofthe
of
consisting
shops for con
coal mines
nation's
the
the rail
industry,
and machine
1900.
railroads
that
supplied
into
steel went
also
stimu
lated the economy by creating a unified national market in a
country once divided between North and South by the Mason
26
OAH Magazine
of History
Spring 1999
railroads
these
sales,
separated
exercised
called robber barons
like Jay Gould
corporate
and
in the
the new
so
Vanderbilt
elite
managerial
traffic
the terms
and
form
Though
and Cornelius
administered
construction,
purchasing,
managers.
it was
empires,
coordinated,
now
ownership,
salaried
by
account
flows,
and
of
conditions
for workers.
But as the size ofthe nation's rail network doubled between 1877
and 1893, the railroad business fell into crisis. Overbuilding, heavy
indebtedness, and "watered" (inflated) stock prices led railroadmanagers
to compete recklesslywith each other for business to cover theirhigh fixed
costs.
To
But
railroads
agreed
were
unenforceable
economic
crisis
pools
As
rate wars,
ruinous
stop
competing
agers
Background
Railroads were at the center of the rising industrial machine
that made
the
control,
employment
respectable elements
by the unsettled plains and
Mountains.
Rocky
ing,
bitterly
convulsions
line and between East andWest
Dixon
that planned,
the spreading
sent
boycott
Boycott
pioneered
on Washing
marches
Populist political insurgency, the boycott and the turbulence that
attended ithelped define "the crisis ofthe 1890s," which marked the
boundary between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Before
that crisis was
Anarchy":
Pullman
1894
1894 Pullman strike and boycott, which pitted one ofthe
nation's first large industrial unions against the combined
forces of the Pullman Sleeping Car Company, the nation's
railroads, and the federal government, remains the best known of all
the great
of
Edge
and
rates
short
pay
locomotive
ing
managers
by
began
recruitment
efforts,
individualized
striking,
Manager's
classifications
differential
this
to neutralize
the
managers
Association
and
revenue
wages,
losses
created
their workers.
bargaining
firemen,
labor
By
scarcity
occupations,
the
recruit
to
to
attract
and
other
by
intensify
and
adopting
resisted
General
to set standard
strikebreakers,
strikes.
to
the mid-1880s
Chicago-based
in 1886
(GMA)
due
of
the craft brotherhoods
pay schemes. When
man
railroad
period,
the wages
brakemen,
reclassifying
rates.
they had been compelled
collective
accept
whereby
uniform
lasting.
by cutting
engineers,
"pools"
charge
to the sparsely settled West.
skilled workers
railroad
and
wages
premium
and
during
In the early phases of railroad building
unionized
forged
markets
deepened
to falling
responded
managers
to divide
and
job
equalize
Edge of Anarchy
Schneirov/Ragged
_
__
.
to flock
to the new
organiza
tion.
By June 1894, when
the ARU held its first con
vention, it boasted 150,000
members,
est
United
at that
States
time.
Pullman
the ARU continued
its meteoric
a crisis
growth,
town
in the
brewing
fourteen
Pullman,
a planned
of
miles
south of Chicago.
was
larg
in the
organization
As
was
it the
making
labor
Pullman
community
constructed in 1880 around
the factories of George M.
a manufacturer
Pullman,
many
visitors
the model
pian
who
toured
Pullman
town,
to be
peared
To
railroads.
passenger
the many
of
cars leased by
the sleeping
ap
a successful
experiment
Uto
uniting
industrial efficiency and the
motive
profit
laudable
of benevo
impulses
lence and moral
contrast
ofthe
(Courtesy
Eugene V. Debs
Foundation,
Terre Haute,
IN.)
with
efforts
to broaden
own
different
trades
and
countered
The
solidarity.
organize
the
first great
lesser
with
cooperation
managerial
skilled
to unite
attempt
workers
their
the
occurred
with
the spread of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s. But mutual
in the Reading
scabbing by knights and brotherhood members
Railroad strike of 1887; the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy strike
of 1888; and the New York Central strike of 1890?all union
halted
defeats?virtually
Although
the brotherhoods
craft
federations,
ness
and
intense
matic
the first
in other
draw
labors
in organizing
progress
workers.
successful
Victor
to overcome
effort
was
workers
a
Debs,
the
craft
and
product
the
charis
thirty-eight-year-old,
former official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen.
In 1893 Debs founded the American Railway Union
(ARU).
Rather
a new
than
a federation
industrial
union,
of existing
craft organizations,
an association
of all workers
railroads irrespective of their skill level or whether
machine
repair
shops,
1893 the ARU won
Railroad,
leading
tens
running
trades,
or
freight
the ARU
by the
employed
theyworked
depots.
was
in the
In April
an electrifying victory on the Great Northern
of
thousands
of dissatisfied
Western
workers
air endured
dirty
by Chicago's
the
streets,
paved
Generally,
the
core
them
the
only
Pullman's
organize
to live
Residents
labor
were
out
the
tried
than
or
homes
the
recognized
an
arcade
denied
underside
democratic
in-town
access
his
expected
he
exercise
of
at
paternalism
but
commute,
to
persistendy
Pullman
deemed an essential lubricant of working-class
few who
and
coercive
experiment.
rather
also
Pullman's
indoor plumbing,
parks,
who
agitators
applauded
own
questionable
a bank.
pointed
in town
their
beautiful
water,
and
workers
of his much
to own
and
a theater,
stores,
containing
air
clean
sa
with
class,
working
residents enjoyed neat and tidy brick homes with
ment.
divisive
of
and
employees
subsequently experimented with various
railroad
of Eugene
railroad
water
the rows
garbage,
interspersed
loons,
workers
streets
of dingy shacks and bunga
lows
Railroad
In
uplift.
to the unpaved
strewn
Eugene V. Debs.
the most
with
didn't
allow
self-govern
to
then
saloons,
daily life. One ofthe
was
Pullman
the
pro-labor
reformer Richard T. Ely who in 1884 called it "a benevolent well
wishing feudalism" (2).
The five-year depression starting in 1893, precipitated by the
failure
inherent
Pullman
of
railroad
financing,
in Pullman's
slashed
wages
glaringly
experiment.
on
the
the
exposed
Faced
average
with
of
33
contradictions
overproduction,
percent.
Yet
he
declined to reduce rents on the homes his employees lived in or
the prices his company stores charged. By the end of April 1894,
OAH Magazine
of History
Spring 1999
27
Edge of Anarchy
Schneirov/Ragged
about 35 percent of Pullman's workers had joined a local affiliated
with the newly formed ARU.
to protect
refused
or provoke
strikebreakers
the
and
confrontations,
the
unwillingness of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld to intervene
with state militia against workers whose votes had elected him, the
strike appeared to be a peaceful success after its first week.
of the committee, Pullman
demands but fired three members
on
out
11
Local
leader Thomas Heathcoate
walked
workers
May.
that
the
underlay their action: "We do not
explained
desperation
In the
The GMA, however, had allies in Washington.
context of the political crisis of the mid-1890s,
U.S. Attorney
General Olney, himself a former railroad attorney, perceived the
On
or
know
do
a union
7 May
a reduction
committee
rents.
in
the outcome
what
that we
know
and
ourselves
to
First,
were
they
on
other
and
frustrated
one
that
issues
united
angry
at
the
arbitrary actions of Pullman's foremen, who had the authority to hire
and fire, setwages, and administer discipline. Pullman insisted that
rates
wage
set anew
be
that
element
assertion
of
Pullman's
paternalism
to sustain
were
able
new
each
contract
for
united
Pullman's
"manhood."
their
had
their
To
been
own
cars,
sleeping
in workers'
the lack of predictability
this exacerbated
second
after
male
many
endurable
was
the
breadwinners,
as
only
over
paternalism
lives. A
workers
male
and
as
long
wives
their
they
and
children by bringing home a family wage. But with wage cuts that
reduced families to destitution, Pullman seemed to have undercut
both kinds of paternalism. Not only his employees but many civic
leaders in Chicago held him responsible for that violation of the
moral code (4).
The unity of Pullman workers did have its limits. Much in the
manner of other white-led institutions of that era, they refused union
Victorian
to
membership
two
African-American
thousand
If these
porters.
porters had struck along with other Pullman employees, the union
might have been able to shut down the Pullman works without
relying on theARU to declare a sympathetic boycott of all railroads
using Pullman sleeping cars (5).
At
the
for
arbitration
convention
June
the
cautious
But
confrontation.
Debs
Pullman's
to substitute
hoped
accept third party mediation, such as that offered by Civic Federation
of Chicago, left theARU no choice but to declare a sympathy boycott
of all trains carrying Pullman cars. The boycott nationalized what had
been a local conflict. The strike was now a battle to the finish that
set the ARU, the nation's largest labor organization and first great
industrial union, against theGMA, the earliest managerial elite in the
nation's
industry.
largest
Despite the refusal of the brotherhoods to support the strike,
which kept the boycott from spreading to the East, theARU was able
to
shut
the
down
nation's
rail
in
traffic
states
twenty-seven
from
Chicago to the Pacific coast. From the start theGMA was determined
to use the strike to crush theARU before itwas strong enough tomeet
the
railroads
worked
is clear
the
from
surviving
To
strikers
to
avoid
accomplish
the GMA
this,
of History
of
its meetings
(6).
be used to break the strike, Debs
riotous
the benevolent
OAH Magazine
notes
secret
that troops would
violence. With
28
equal
terms.
to bring in the federal government on its side. That much
Fearful
cautioned
on more
actions
that might
neutrality of Chicago's
Spring 1999
precipitate
police, who
a
test
fundamental
of
constitutional
order
and property rights seemingly threatened on all sides by anarchy
a GMA legal
and insurrection.
He appointed Edwin Walker,
as
a
1 JulyWalker
On
for
U.S.
attorney
advisor,
Chicago.
special
asked for and received from the federal district court in Chicago
an injunction preventing ARU leaders from using any method,
even
to
persuasion,
peaceful
tinue
their
convince
railroad
con
to
workers
boycott.
justified under a major premise of nine
teenth-century jurisprudence that a public interest existed in the
in the market, whether that
individual right of free competition
or
the labor of workers. Under
market be for the products of business
federal
the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, the
government had the
injunction was
The
to prevent
power
in
interstate
or any unreasonable
trusts
and
commerce,
on
restraint
courts
the
deemed
competition
the ARU
boycott
such a restraint. The following day, Olney convinced President
Grover Cleveland to dispatch federal troops toChicago to enforce the
injunction despite the absence of violence and over the protests of
Governor Altgeld.
The presence of federal troops turned the tide of the strike in
favor of the railroads. Large crowds of outraged partisans of the
strikers clashed with troops?and state militia finally dispatched by
Governor
ment
the
Altgeld?in
the
and
strikebreakers
11
city,
many
leaving
for
of massive
the protection
and
Debs
contempt
In Chicago,
as a bulwark
seen
against
in civil order. By 9 July the trains, operated
under
Meanwhile,
July
the
of
were
efforts
their
railroads;
a perceived breakdown
to move.
areas
industrial
Public opinion quickly swung to the side of the govern
casualties.
by
or
to bargain
refusal
as
contest
unfolding
(3).
longer"
two
We
maintain
will
and
life,
any
question,
care much.
than
of
to work
of wages
refused
only
do not
less wages
necessaries
the
the economic
workers.
in fact we
for
refuse
absolutely
In addition
Pullman
in
not
company
and
be,
are working
families
we
proposition
will
a restoration
requested
the
After
of
other
further
court,
sentiment
ARU
local
force,
were
began
on
arrested
strikers.
demoralizing
among
grew
armed
leaders
organized
workers
for
a general strike to support theARU and protest the blatant partiality
of the federal government in crushing a peaceful boycott. In stark
to conservative
contrast
obstructing
which
opinion,
the
commerce,
prevailing
dubbed
a dictator
Debs
among
opinion
workers
for
was
that the federal judicial and executive branches had colluded with
moneyed interests in abrogating labor's right to strike. But Samuel
Gompers, president ofthe American Federation of Labor (AFL), and
other
national
union
leaders
were
cautious.
in Chicago
Meeting
on
12 July in response toDebs's plea for support, they counseled against
any
sympathy
now
doomed
action
that might
to defeat.
The
embroil
walkout
other
remained
unions
in a conflict
strong
in many
smallerWestern railroad centers through the end of the month, but
with the defeat ofthe strike at its center and without support from the
rest of organized labor, its fate was sealed. On 2 August the ARU
called off the boycott. In Pullman, the strike lingered until September
when
two
thousand
Pullman
strikers
surrendered
unconditionally.
Edge of Anarchy
Schneirov/Ragged
Legacy
The
strike was
Pullman
unionism.
on
Coming
the
heels
setback
the
of
for early
industrial
of
defeat
crushing
under
the
in 1892 at
of Iron and Steel Workers
Amalgamated Association
it portended a long period of labor
Homestead,
Pennsylvania,
from
exclusion
the bastions
of
corporate-run
large-scale,
that
industry
ended only with the coming ofthe Congress of Industrial Organiza
tions (CIO) in 1935. The use of the court injunction to stymie
sympathy boycotts like that of Pullman and strikes to require
to
employers
closed
economic
of
convinced
to speak
critics
labor
difficulties
of
after
from
after
in
a
serving
by
(the
employment
the turn
"government
action
Debs,
Eugene
workers
a tidal wave
into
broadened
shop)
leading
nonunion
exclude
ofthe
century,
The
injunction."
his
six-month
on
defiance
of
the
the
considerable
Socialist
immense
state
reservoir
and
rhetorical
massed
talents,
candidate,
presidential
of working-class
Debs
capital,
would
and
Congress
workers
in
losers"
metaphor
conceals
its significance
strike, the
in a broader
freedom
in an untrammeled
market
(7).
In a merger
from 1896 to 1904 the corporate form of organization
wave
extended
an
era of
railroads.
be
too,
1898
that
and
to mollify
and
inaugurated
the
redressing
a ringing
the
endorsement
power
the
a revised
of
to determine,"
future
settled
substantially
by capital
behalf
of
labor
requiring
recognized
inaugurated
on the
peace
to labor,
recognition
public
Industrial
imbalance
and
bargaining,
on
of
the
the Erdman Act passed by
collective
offer
that
as so many
contracts
yellow-dog
as a condition
of employment,
the relations of labor and capital.
offered
and
collective
outlawed
intervention
government
same Congress
as
sponsored
unions
brotherhoods
for
be dealt with
longer
(8). Olney
Eager
theory
etc.,
endorsed
elements
accepted
remain
regarded
can no
to forswear
the railroad
"the
as to rates,
and
to
established
lambasted
shippers
conditions"
Olney,
now
"it must
isolated units"
other
else may
of wage-earners
the
group
the boycott had been defeated and his vision of
Richard
"Whatever
he wrote,
the
political and legal transition taking place in American history, one
that would ultimately undermine
the Victorian
liberal ideal of
individual
Once
and
that
protect
amply
as to wages
liberalism.
of
political
of
reality
commission
a report
issued
would
secured,
as
increasingly
and
growing
1894 the president's
strike
competition
times
judges,
the demand
in the market.
the Pullman
mass
instability
scientists,
the
to man
ability
industrial
still
economy
and
pricing,
with
peace
the
corporation's
production,
social
their
In November
6 percent
five
own
his
to make
organization
that
The
so as to mitigate
of
segments
large
ownership.
economists,
thinkers
study
the
investment,
regulate
challenged
run
labor was clearly the loser in the Pullman
Though
its products
as
vote in 1912.
"winners
for
as well
receiving
eventually
for his
sympathy
and
bargaining.
to
jail sentence,
age
order
society
corporate-dominated
into
railroads
proprietary
employees
turn to political action on behalf of the Socialist Party of America.
Drawing
the
beyond
a devastating
the
to investigate
Commission
Its final report, issued in 1902,
collective
between
a way
of
and
as
sellers
of
the
emerging
bargaining
the
buyers
in the market.
labor
To
new
implement
the
agenda,
Federation
Civic
Federation
Basing
its actions
cord
between
Civic
Chicago
the National
organized
in 1900.
(NCF)
on
a
national
business
and labor leaders, the NCF
cation
of
Sherman
dence
to
the
labor
and
tion
of
strikes
perspective,
ments
of both
recoiled
and
and
from
confrontation
appli
jurispru
of
bodies
organized
longer
bloody
Act
capital
sought
to the
alternatives
legislative
ac
fragile
the
concilia
lockouts.
In a
therefore,
seg
labor and capital
the
of
prospect
after
the de
feat of the Pullman boycott. That
recoil helped propel the labor-capi
tal question to the forefront of the
national political agenda during the
Progressive
National
Guard
troops
in Pullman
Yards,
1894.
(Courtesy of the Chicago
Historical
Society,
ICHi-04903.)
Era.
Endnotes
1.Gerald G. Eggert, Railroad Labor
Disputes: The Beginnings of Fed
OAH Magazine
of History
Spring 1999
29
Edge of Anarchy
Schneirov/Ragged
eral Strike Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1967), 172.
2. Richard T. Ely, "Pullman: A Social Study," Harper's Weekly 10
(February 1885): 495. See also, JaneAddams, "AModern Lear,"
TUB
fOUKTH
Of
JULY.
1912): 131-37.
Survey 29 (2 November
in Susan E. Hirsch, "The Search for Unity Among
3. Quoted
Railroad Workers: The Pullman Strike in Perspective," in The
Pullman Strike and the Crisis ofthe 1890s: Essays on Labor and
Politics, ed. Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick
Salvatore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
4. Janice L. Reiff, "AModern Lear and his Daughters: Gender in the
Model Town of Pullman," in The Pullman Strike and the Crisis
"The Search for Unity Among
6. Donald
L. McMurry,
"Labor
Policies
Railroad Workers."
of
the General
Managers'
Journal
of Economic
Association
of Chicago,
1886-1894,"
13
History
(Spring 1953): 160-78.
7. See Martin
J. Sklar,
The
Corporate
Press, 1998).
8. United States Strike Commission,
Report of the Chicago Strike
of June-July, 1894 (Washington DC: Government
Printing
Office, 1894), xv-xvi; and Olney to Judge George M. Dallas,
quoted in Gerald G. Eggert, Richard Olney, Evolution of a
Press,
1974),
Park:
State
Pennsylvania
University
157-58.
the
Mjte
qui
This Chicago
the tradition
Schneirov,
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
of
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