"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 Accessed: 17/04/2010 14:46

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http://www.jstor.org Richard Schneirov

"To the of Ragged Edge Anarchy":

The 1894 Pullman Boycott

Tlhe 1894 Pullman strike and boycott, which pitted one ofthe Dixon line and between East andWest by the unsettled plains and nation's first large industrial unions against the combined Rocky Mountains. forces of the Pullman Sleeping Car Company, the nation's Though federal land grants helped build the railroads, most of railroads, and the federal government, remains the best known of all the financing derived from the sale of stock on the newly formed New the great strikes American workers have undertaken. From 26 June York Stock Exchange. As the first large corporate enterprises of to mid-July the boycott closed the rail arteries of half the United national scope, the railroads separated ownership, now in the form States, from Chicago to theWest Coast. The Pullman boycott of stock, from control, exercised by salaried managers. Though so culminated two decades of intensifying labor conflict in the last called robber barons like Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt on quarter of the nineteenth century, especially the railroads. pioneered these corporate empires, it was the new managerial elite Coming amidst the nation's worst depression, marches on Washing that planned, coordinated, and administered traffic flows, account ton, DC by unemployed workers, a series of large and bitterly ing, sales, purchasing, construction, and the terms and conditions of contested strikes in the bituminous coal industry, and the spreading employment for workers. Populist political insurgency, the boycott and the turbulence that But as the size ofthe nation's rail network doubled between 1877 attended ithelped define "the crisis ofthe 1890s," which marked the and 1893, the railroad business fell into crisis. Overbuilding, heavy boundary between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Before indebtedness, and "watered" (inflated) stock prices led railroadmanagers that crisis was surmounted, the Pullman boycott sent convulsions of to compete recklesslywith each other for business to cover theirhigh fixed fright and foreboding through the ranks ofthe respectable elements costs. To stop ruinous rate wars, managers forged "pools" whereby of the nation. In the memorable phrase of U.S. Attorney General competing railroads agreed to divide markets and charge uniform rates. Richard Olney, the strike seemed to have brought the nation "to the But pools were unenforceable and short lasting. ragged edge of anarchy" (1). As economic crisis deepened during this period, railroad man agers responded to falling rates by cutting the wages of their workers. Background In the early phases of railroad building they had been compelled to Railroads were at the center of the rising industrial machine pay premium wages and accept collective bargaining to attract that made America the world's greatest economic power by 1900. unionized locomotive engineers, brakemen, firemen, and other In their frenzied expansion beginning in mid-century, the rail skilled workers to the sparsely settled West. By the mid-1880s to roads called forth a world-class capital goods industry, consisting railroad managers began neutralize labor scarcity by intensify of iron and steel mills, foundries and machine shops for con ing recruitment efforts, reclassifying occupations, and adopting structing locomotives, and the iron and coal mines that supplied individualized pay schemes. When the craft brotherhoods resisted went them. In the 1880s three-quarters ofthe nation's steel into by striking, the managers created the Chicago-based General to set railroad construction. The building of the railroads also stimu Manager's Association (GMA) in 1886 standard job lated the economy by creating a unified national market in a classifications and wages, recruit strikebreakers, and equalize country once divided between North and South by the Mason differential revenue losses due to strikes.

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__ _ . - to flock to the new organiza tion. By June 1894, when the ARU held its first con vention, it boasted 150,000

members, making it the larg est labor organization in the United States at that time.

Pullman As the ARU continued

its meteoric growth, a crisis was brewing in the town of Pullman, fourteen miles south of Chicago. Pullman was a planned community constructed in 1880 around the factories of George M. Pullman, a manufacturer of the sleeping cars leased by many passenger railroads. To the many visitors who toured

the model town, Pullman ap

peared to be a successful Uto

pian experiment uniting industrial efficiency and the profit motive with the most

laudable impulses of benevo lence and moral uplift. In contrast to the unpaved streets strewn with garbage, the rows Eugene V. Debs. (Courtesy ofthe Eugene V. Debs Foundation, Terre Haute, IN.) of dingy shacks and bunga lows interspersed with sa loons, and the questionable Railroad workers countered water managerial cooperation with their and dirty air endured by Chicago's working class, Pullman's own efforts to broaden solidarity. The first great attempt to unite the residents enjoyed neat and tidy brick homes with indoor plumbing, different trades and the lesser skilled organize workers occurred with paved streets, clean air and water, beautiful parks, and an arcade the spread of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s. But mutual containing stores, a theater, and a bank. and in scabbing by knights brotherhood members the Reading Generally, only the labor agitators who tried persistendy to Railroad strike of 1887; the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy strike organize Pullman's workers pointed out the coercive paternalism at of and New core 1888; the York Central strike of 1890?all union the of his much applauded experiment. Pullman expected his in defeats?virtually halted progress organizing railroad workers. employees to live in town rather than commute, but he didn't allow the to own own or Although brotherhoods subsequently experimented with various them their homes exercise democratic self-govern to overcome craft federations, the first successful effort craft divisive ment. Residents were also denied in-town access to saloons, then ness in was and draw other railroad workers the product of the deemed an essential lubricant of working-class daily life. One ofthe intense labors of Victor a was Eugene Debs, thirty-eight-year-old, charis few who recognized the underside of Pullman the pro-labor matic former official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. reformer Richard T. Ely who in 1884 called it "a benevolent well In 1893 Debs founded the American Railway Union (ARU). wishing feudalism" (2). a Rather than federation of existing craft organizations, the ARU was The five-year depression starting in 1893, precipitated by the a new industrial an association union, of all workers employed by the failure of railroad financing, glaringly exposed the contradictions railroads or in irrespective of their skill level whether they worked in the inherent Pullman's experiment. Faced with overproduction, or machine repair shops, running trades, freight depots. In April Pullman slashed wages on the average of 33 percent. Yet he won 1893 the ARU an electrifying victory on the Great Northern declined to reduce rents on the homes his employees lived in or Railroad, leading tens of thousands of dissatisfied Western workers the prices his company stores charged. By the end of April 1894,

OAH Magazine of History Spring 1999 27 Schneirov/Ragged Edge of Anarchy

about 35 percent of Pullman's workers had joined a local affiliated refused to protect strikebreakers or provoke confrontations, and the with the newly formed ARU. unwillingness of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld to intervene a a On 7 May union committee requested restoration of wages with state militia against workers whose votes had elected him, the or a reduction in rents. After the company not only refused the strike appeared to be a peaceful success after its first week. demands but fired three members of the committee, Pullman The GMA, however, had allies in Washington. In the workers walked out on 11 May. Local leader Thomas Heathcoate context of the political crisis of the mid-1890s, U.S. Attorney explained the desperation that underlay their action: "We do not General Olney, himself a former railroad attorney, perceived the as a test know what the outcome will be, and in fact we do not care much. We unfolding contest fundamental of constitutional order do know that we are working for less wages than will maintain and property rights seemingly threatened on all sides by anarchy ourselves and families in the necessaries of life, and on that one and insurrection. He appointed Edwin Walker, a GMA legal proposition we absolutely refuse to work any longer" (3). advisor, as a special U.S. attorney for Chicago. On 1 JulyWalker In addition to the economic question, two other issues united asked for and received from the federal district court in Chicago

Pullman workers. First, they were frustrated and angry at the an injunction preventing ARU leaders from using any method, even to con arbitrary actions of Pullman's foremen, who had the authority to hire peaceful persuasion, to convince railroad workers and fire, set wages, and administer discipline. Pullman insisted that tinue their boycott. a wage rates be set anew after each new contract for sleeping cars, and The injunction was justified under major premise of nine this exacerbated the lack of predictability in workers' lives. A teenth-century jurisprudence that a public interest existed in the second element that united Pullman's male workers was the individual right of free competition in the market, whether that assertion of their "manhood." To many male breadwinners, market be for the products of business or the labor of workers. Under as as Pullman's paternalism had been endurable only long they the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, the federal government had the or on were able to sustain their own paternalism over their wives and power to prevent trusts any unreasonable restraint competition children by bringing home a family wage. But with wage cuts that in interstate commerce, and the courts deemed the ARU boycott reduced families to destitution, Pullman seemed to have undercut such a restraint. The following day, Olney convinced President both kinds of paternalism. Not only his employees but many civic Grover Cleveland to dispatch federal troops toChicago to enforce the leaders in Chicago held him responsible for that violation of the injunction despite the absence of violence and over the protests of Victorian moral code (4). Governor Altgeld. The unity of Pullman workers did have its limits. Much in the The presence of federal troops turned the tide of the strike in manner of other white-led institutions of that era, they refused union favor of the railroads. Large crowds of outraged partisans of the state membership to two thousand African-American porters. If these strikers clashed with troops?and militia finally dispatched by areas porters had struck along with other Pullman employees, the union Governor Altgeld?in the industrial of the city, leaving many might have been able to shut down the Pullman works without casualties. Public opinion quickly swung to the side of the govern relying on theARU to declare a sympathetic boycott of all railroads ment and the railroads; their efforts were seen as a bulwark against using Pullman sleeping cars (5). a perceived breakdown in civil order. By 9 July the trains, operated to of massive armed At the June convention the cautious Debs hoped substitute by strikebreakers under the protection force, began were on arbitration for confrontation. But Pullman's refusal to bargain or to move. Meanwhile, Debs and other ARU leaders arrested accept third party mediation, such as that offered by Civic Federation 11 July for contempt of court, further demoralizing strikers. of Chicago, left theARU no choice but to declare a sympathy boycott In Chicago, sentiment grew among local organized workers for of all trains carrying Pullman cars. The boycott nationalized what had a general strike to support theARU and protest the blatant partiality been a local conflict. The strike was now a battle to the finish that of the federal government in crushing a peaceful boycott. In stark a set the ARU, the nation's largest labor organization and first great contrast to conservative opinion, which dubbed Debs dictator for was industrial union, against theGMA, the earliest managerial elite in the obstructing commerce, the prevailing opinion among workers and executive branches had colluded with nation's largest industry. that the federal judicial to Despite the refusal of the brotherhoods to support the strike, moneyed interests in abrogating labor's right strike. But Samuel and which kept the boycott from spreading to the East, theARU was able Gompers, president ofthe American Federation of Labor (AFL), were in on to shut down the nation's rail traffic in twenty-seven states from other national union leaders cautious. Meeting Chicago to counseled Chicago to the Pacific coast. From the start theGMA was determined 12 July in response Debs's plea for support, they against unions in a to use the strike to crush theARU before itwas strong enough tomeet any sympathy action that might embroil other conflict terms. now to defeat. The walkout remained in the railroads on more equal To accomplish this, the GMA doomed strong many centers the but worked to bring in the federal government on its side. That much smallerWestern railroad through the end of month, at center from the is clear from the surviving secret notes of its meetings (6). with the defeat ofthe strike its and without support Fearful that troops would be used to break the strike, Debs rest of organized labor, its fate was sealed. On 2 August the ARU cautioned strikers to avoid riotous actions that might precipitate called off the boycott. In Pullman, the strike lingered until September violence. With the benevolent neutrality of Chicago's police, who when two thousand Pullman strikers surrendered unconditionally.

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Legacy beyond the railroads into the large segments of the economy still was a The Pullman strike devastating setback for early industrial under proprietary ownership. The corporation's ability to man on unionism. Coming the heels of the crushing defeat of the age and regulate investment, production, pricing, and the demand so as to Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in 1892 at for its products mitigate industrial instability increasingly a Homestead, Pennsylvania, it portended long period of labor challenged economists, social scientists, judges, and political to exclusion from the bastions of large-scale, corporate-run industry that thinkers make their peace with the growing reality of group ended only with the coming ofthe Congress of Industrial Organiza organization in the market. tions (CIO) in 1935. The use of the court injunction to stymie In November 1894 the president's commission established to a sympathy boycotts like that of Pullman and strikes to require study the Pullman strike issued report that lambasted "the theory to employers exclude nonunion workers from employment (the that competition would amply protect shippers as to rates, etc., and a wave turn closed shop) broadened into tidal after the ofthe century, employees as to wages and other conditions" and endorsed collective leading labor critics to speak of "government by injunction." The bargaining. Once the boycott had been defeated and his vision of economic action in a difficulties of corporate-dominated society order secured, Richard Olney, too, accepted elements of a revised convinced Eugene Debs, after serving his six-month jail sentence, to liberalism. "Whatever else may remain for the future to determine," turn on must now as to political action behalf of the Socialist Party of America. he wrote, "it be regarded substantially settled that the on immense reservoir mass can no Drawing the of working-class sympathy for his of wage-earners longer be dealt with by capital as so many defiance of the state and massed capital, as well as his own isolated units" (8). Olney sponsored the Erdman Act passed by run times as considerable rhetorical talents, Debs would five the Congress in 1898 that outlawed yellow-dog contracts requiring to as a Socialist presidential candidate, eventually receiving 6 percent of the workers forswear unions condition of employment, recognized vote in 1912. the railroad brotherhoods and collective bargaining, and inaugurated Though labor was clearly the loser in the Pullman strike, the an era of government intervention on behalf of labor peace on the in a "winners and losers" metaphor conceals its significance broader railroads. Eager to mollify and offer public recognition to labor, the same political and legal transition taking place in American history, one Congress inaugurated the Industrial Commission to investigate that would ultimately undermine the Victorian liberal ideal of the relations of labor and capital. Its final report, issued in 1902, in an a wave a individual freedom untrammeled market (7). In merger offered ringing endorsement of collective bargaining as a way of to from 1896 1904 the corporate form of organization extended redressing the power imbalance between the buyers and sellers of labor in the market.

To implement the emerging new agenda, the Chicago Civic Federation organized the National Civic Federation (NCF) in 1900. on a ac Basing its actions fragile cord between national business and labor leaders, the NCF sought legislative alternatives to the appli cation of Sherman Act jurispru

dence to the organized bodies of labor and capital and the concilia tion of strikes and lockouts. In a

longer perspective, therefore, seg ments of both labor and capital recoiled from the prospect of

bloody confrontation 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 Era.

Endnotes 1.Gerald G. Eggert, Railroad Labor National Guard troops in Pullman Yards, 1894. (Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-04903.) Disputes: The Beginnings of Fed

OAH Magazine of History Spring 1999 29 Schneirov/Ragged Edge of Anarchy

eral Strike Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, TUB fOUKTH Of 1967), 172. JULY. 2. Richard T. Ely, "Pullman: A Social Study," Harper's Weekly 10 (February 1885): 495. See also, JaneAddams, "AModern Lear," Survey 29 (2 November 1912): 131-37. 3. Quoted in Susan E. Hirsch, "The Search for Unity Among 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 ofthe 1890s. ("""ISS RW&?<*?* "fftilftttK 5?f5 T^C^S j 5. Hirsch, "The Search for Unity Among Railroad Workers." 6. Donald L. McMurry, "Labor Policies of the General Managers' Association of Chicago, 1886-1894," Journal of Economic History 13 (Spring 1953): 160-78. 7. See Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 18904916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Mary O. Furner, "Knowing Capitalism: Public Investigation and the Labor in the in The State and Question Long Progressive Era," the Mjte qui arypcoLE for wuecpom amp moma/mme*. Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experience, ed. Mary O. Furner and Barry Supple (Cambridge: Cambridge This Chicago Times cartoon of 4 July 1894 presents Pullman as a tyrant in University Press, 1990); Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor the tradition of KingGeorgelll. inModern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Daniel R. Ernst, Lawyers Against Labor: From to Individual Rights Corporate Liberalism (Urbana: University University of Illinois Press, 1982. of Illinois Press, 1995); and Richard Schneirov, Labor and Schneirov, Richard. Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the of Modern Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97. Urbana: in of Illinois Liberalism Chicago, 1864-97 (Urbana: University University of Illinois Press, 1998. Press, 1998). Schneirov, Richard, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore, eds. 8. United States Strike Commission, Report of the Chicago Strike The Pullman Strike and the Crisis ofthe 1890s: Essays on Labor of June-July, 1894 (Washington DC: Government Printing and Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. to M. Office, 1894), xv-xvi; and Olney Judge George Dallas, Smith, Carl S. Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great in G. Richard Evolution of a quoted Gerald Eggert, Olney, Chicago Fire, The Haymarket Bomb, and theModel Town of Statesman (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Pullman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 157-58. Press, 1974), Stromquist, Shelton. A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America. Ur Bibliography bana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. An in Industrial Order and Buder, Stanley. Pullman: Experiment United States Strike Commission. Report on the Chicago Strike of 18804930. New York: Oxford Univer sess. Community Planning, June-July, 1894. 53rd Cong. 3rd Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 7. sity Press, 1967. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895. Dubofsky, Melvyn. The State and Labor inModern America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Eggert, Gerald G. Railroad Labor Disputes: The Beginnings of Federal Strike Ann Arbor: of Policy. University Michigan Richard Schneirov is an associate professor of history at Indiana State Press, 1967. University. He is author of Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict The of a Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: Story Unique and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97 (1998) a Experiment and of Great Labor Upheaval. Chicago: University and is co-editor with Shelton Stromquist and Nick Salvatore of The of Chicago Press, 1942. Pullman Strike and the Crisis ofthe 1890s: Essays on Labor and Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana: Politics (forthcoming).

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