The Pullman strike.
At stations and waysides throughout the American west, trains sat idle in early July, 1894, with members of ARU locals refusing to switch trains containing Pullman cars, or load or unload any cars from trains which also had Pullmans. The ARU called for a nationwide general strike by all unions, which was opposed by Samuel Gompers and the AFL, and failed to materialize. A call for the support of the other railroad unions also failed, and the Pullman workers on the trains themselves, porters and conductors, also refused to support the strike.
Public disapproval of the strike centered on the disruption of the flow of goods and passengers, then nearly wholly dependent on the railroads, and demanded the government do something to end the strike. President Grover Cleveland ordered the US Marshals to arrest the strikers and the US Army to take over the aspects of railroad operation boycotted by the strikers. The strike had already had its share of violence, mostly against railroad property, before the military involvement. After the army entered the labor dispute the violence became worse.
Twelve thousand American troops were used to bring an end to the strike, supported by the marshals and local authorities. Clashes in several locations led to at least 30 deaths among the strikers, and at least 57 injured. Damage to company property, including Pullman cars that were burned on the sidings by rioting strikers, exceeded $80 million, more than $2 billion in 2018. Much of the violence occurred in California, addressed by strikers to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which, like Pullman, had recently reduced the pay of its workers. They used sabotage techniques against their employer to wreck trains and company equipment.
The Pullman strike divided the populations of towns and cities across the Midwest and west, with merchants and industrialists strongly against the strikers and those involved in agriculture largely supporting them. The press was similarly divided, though the newspapers of most of the larger cities were against the strike. By July 20, 1894, the strike had been suppressed and the trains were again rolling. Most of the strikers lost their jobs. But Pullman lost its town. In the aftermath of the strike the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the Pullman Company to divest of the town in 1897.
Eugene V. Debs was convicted in federal court and sentenced to six months imprisonment, during which time he became a socialist. The ARU collapsed. The government of Grover Cleveland and Congress, at the urging of Samuel Gompers and other labor leaders who had opposed the Pullman strike, created the national holiday of Labor Day less than a week following the suppression of the strike. The Pullman strike in the majority view of the American public had been a victory over the socialists and anarchists which were linked with immigration by those who did not share American social mores and beliefs.