The seeds of the Pullman strike
The Pullman Company, which built passenger and other railcars, also built a company town named Pullman, in which it required its employees to reside. It owned the houses for which it charged rents, the stores which provided groceries, clothing, shoes, and all other necessities. This meant that the wages paid to Pullman workers were returned to Pullman for goods and services. The company town was well designed and laid out, the houses spacious and well-built, and the merchandise in the stores was of generally good quality. Pullman’s workers were for the most part content with the arrangements until the Panic of 1893.
When that financial downturn led to a decline in demand for Pullman products the company cut wages for its production workers. The reduction in wages did not coincide with a reduction in rents paid for their homes nor in prices at the company’s stores. Many of Pullman’s workers found themselves falling into debt to their employer. The newly formed American Railway Union recruited the increasingly disgruntled Pullman workers though it counseled against a strike against the company, with union leader Eugene V. Debs believing that support from other unions would be necessary for an ARU strike to succeed. The various railroad brotherhoods generally opposed a strike.
Another reduction in wages led to a wildcat strike by Pullman workers on May 11, 1894. Debs, though initially in opposition to the strike, announced his support and began working to gain the support of other unions. The strike divided American public opinion and the American labor movement. The AFL and Samuel Gompers opposed the actions of the ARU as did most of the brotherhoods which represented the crafts required of the railroads. The ARU took steps to arbitrate the issue, but the Pullman Company refused, stating that it had nothing to arbitrate. The ARU, which consisted at the time of 465 locals representing most of the unskilled railroad positions, issued a deadline for arbitration of June 26.
When that date came and the Pullman Company continued to refuse to submit the matter to arbitration, the ARU called for a general strike by its member unions. The strike called for any trains which included Pullman cars to be boycotted. The railroads looked to the courts for relief, and received an injunction which forbade the ARU from sending messages in the form of telegrams or the US Mail encouraging members to strike or directing them in how to shut down the railroads. When the injunction was ignored and the workers refused to service trains with Pullman cars, orders for the arrest of Debs and other union officers were sent out.
The legal basis for arrest warrants was on two violations of law by the strikers. The first was the Sherman Anti-trust Act, which made it illegal to restrain commerce or trade. The second was that the strike was impeding the flow of the US Mail, which moved by train between cities and towns. The injunction against the officers of the ARU was issued the first week of July, and by the seventh of that month the officers of the ARU were arrested and awaiting trial. The worst of the Pullman strike, which at its peak involved more than 250,000 workers and most of the American railroads west of Chicago, was yet to come.