The Railroad Strike of 1877 began with workers receiving a 10% cut in their wages, the angered workers, who had their wages cut twice since the previous year, decided to strike. The members of the union refused to go back to work until the pay cut had been returned. This resulted in disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis. Union tactics during the strike included rioting in the streets and destroying railway equipment. As a result of the strike, the Federal Government had to intervene. In this case, President Hayes sided with the railway company by ordering federal troops to halt union activity in West Virginia. Because of government intervention the union strike collapsed, but not before at least 100 people died in the fight. Due …show more content…
The workers who had the wages cut lived in a model town that Pullman had built, but while they now had smaller wages the rent in their apartments stayed the same. Consequently, the workers could no longer afford to live in the town, so they began to strike. Workers convinced the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, to strike with them by refusing to handle the Pullman Cars. In turn, thousands of Railroad workers over the span of 27 states supported the strike. This caused transportation from Chicago to the Pacific Coast to halt. The state governor of Illinois was sympathetic toward unions and refused to call the militia. However, when the Pullman Company appealed to the Federal Government President Grover Cleveland ordered 2000 troops to Chicago to either stop the strike sending workers back, or run the rails themselves. The reasoning for President Cleveland to send troops was due to Federal mail being interfered with. The Federal Courts also sided with the Pullman Company and filed an injunction that forbid union workers to continue striking. Eugene Debs defied the injunction and in turn was sent to prison, which caused the strike too soon collapse due to their lack of …show more content…
In both cases unions became associated with violence, and the Federal Government always took sides with big businesses. However, The Pullman Car Strike was more damaging to unionism during the 19th century. In the Railroad Strike they damaged their reputations, but in the Pullman Strike the unions had taken away their most powerful bargaining technique, which was the strike. The union was also proved to be weak without their leader Eugene Debs, as they went back to work very soon after he was imprisoned taking the 20% wage cut as
The main cause of the strike was when the American Federation of Labor (AFL) started to hire unskilled workers into the steel industry. The skilled jobs that the AA worked in were starting to fade away. The AA was not pleased,
Tensions between union supporters and management began mounting in the years preceding the strike. In April of 1994, the International Union led a three-week strike against major tracking companies in the freight hauling industry in attempts to stop management from creating $9 per hour part-time positions. This would only foreshadow battles to come between management and union. Later, in 1995, teamsters mounted an unprecedented national union campaign in attempts to defeat the labor-management “cooperation” scheme that UPS management tried to establish in order to weaken the union before contract talks (Witt, Wilson). This strike was distinguished from other strikes of recent years in that it was an offensive strike, not a defensive one. It was a struggle in which the union was prepared, fought over issues which it defined, and one which relied overwhelmingly on the efforts of the members themselves (http://www.igc.org/dbacon/Strikes/07ups.htm).
During the Railroad Strike of 1877, when large crowds in Baltimore attempted to attack militia breaking up the strike, President Hayes got word of the uprising and personally sent his troops to quell it (DOC B). Many witnesses of the strike used Yellow Journalism to make it seem as if Communists were causing the strike through the use of political cartoons in newspapers, such as “Always killing the goose that lays the golden egg” (DOC C), where the strike was purposefully invalidated to break up the labor movement. Nevertheless, the largeness of the uprising made strikes become more widely-known, causing employers to be slower to slash wages in fear of a bigger
James B. Weaver illustrates the true damage of monopolies on the public in “A Call to Action” (Document 4). Weaver, a two-time candidate for president of the United States, addresses the meticulous tactics which trusts and monopolies use to increase their profit at the expense of the public and asserts that their main weapons are, ”threats, intimidation, bribery, fraud, wreck, and pillage.” Arguments such as Weaver’s, suggest and end to the end of the laissez-faire capitalism that monopolies are sustained upon. Laissez-faire capitalism is essentially a system where the government takes no position in the affairs of businesses and does not interfere, no matter what harm is being done. This ideology dominated the business world of the century and allowed for vast unemployment, low wages, and impoverishment. Soon, laborers also begin to express their dismay with the way that such businesses are run and the treatment of workers in the railroad industry. An instance of this being the Pullman Strike of 1894. In 1894, laborers went on a nationwide strike against the Pullman Company; they issued a statement regarding their strike in June (Document 6). Workers are repulsed by Pullman’s exertion of power over several institutions and how his greed affects his competitors, who must reduce their wages to keep up with his businesses. This incident inspires many to take
The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in American history and it came about during a period of unrest with labor unions and controversy regarding the role of government in business.5 The strike officially started when employees organized and went to their supervisors to ask for a lowered rent and were refused.5 The strike had many different causes. For example, workers wanted higher wages and fewer working hours, but the companies would not give it to them; and the workers wanted better, more affordable living quarters, but the companies would not offer that to them either. These different causes created an interesting and controversial end to the Pullman strike. Because of this, questions were raised about the strike that are still important today. Was striking a proper means of getting what the workers wanted? Were there better means of petitioning their grievances? Was government intervention constitutional? All these questions were raised by the Pullman Strike.
The unions resorted to many forms of tactics such as boycotts, picketing, and the less prominent “closed shop”. The most prevalent of these methods, however, was the formation of riots. During the late 19th century riots included: the Haymarket Square Riots (1886), the Homestead Lockout, and the Pullman Car Company strike. The Haymarket Square Riots of 1886 took place at the McCormick plant in Chicago, Illinois in response to the worker’s need for an eight hour workday. The first two days were innate, but the third day was where the the situation actually instigated the cause. The owner of the plant, McCormick, attempted to bring strikebreakers (scabs), and a battle had begun between the scabs and the strikers. The riot, wistfully, ended the lives of four men when the police began to attempt to impede and halter the situation. These four deaths initiated a chain reaction resulting in the calling for the revenge of the four men by German radical Johann Most. Despite Johann’s reaction, 200 more Chicago policemen ordered the remaining strikers to leave the area. In the crowd, in the moment, a homemade bomb was hurled leading in the death of one policeman; acting as a predecessor of events, this event lead to a shooting between the policemen and the strikers concluding with the death of four workers and seven more policemen; entirely approximately one hundred people were injured. The Haymarket Riots caused public opinion to turn against labor. The Homestead Lockout took place in Homestead, Pennsylvania at Andrew Carnegie’s steel plant and was instigated by Henry Clay Frick’s wage cut. In this riot workers walked out of the company and then Frick ordered company doors to be locked and trapped the workers inside. Employees rebelled and caused about 200 Pinkerton detectives to come up the river to protect company property and created a battle.
The Underground Railroad was an extremely complex organization whose mission was to free slaves from southern states in the mid-19th century. It was a collaborative organization comprised of white homeowners, freed blacks, captive slaves, or anyone else who would help. This vast network was fragile because it was entirely dependent on the absolute discretion of everyone involved. A slave was the legal property of his owner, so attempting escape or aiding a fugitive slave was illegal and dangerous, for both the slave and the abolitionist. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass understands that he can only reveal so many details about his escape from servitude, saying, “I deeply regret the necessity that impels
strikes turned very bad with deaths and injuries. Having unions were good in some views
Union affiliation was first seen in the 1600’s when the roots of the United States were just being planted with skilled trade groups such as artisans, laborers, goldsmiths and printers. Over the next two hundred years, unions developed their desires for higher wages through the use of strikes and protests. The nation’s progress spurred the need for more labor and so began the Industrial Revolution. During the Revolution, many union members began to witness the power that employers had and as a result decided to make use of the concept of power in numbers. The National Labor Union formed in 1866 and worked to persuade congress to set a Federal eight-hour workday, which applied to government employees (Miller). Many large unions formed following in the NLU’s footsteps and uni...
The Coal Strike of 1902 occurred as a result of many problems that were faced by miners. At the time of the coal strike there were 150,000 miners working in the mines (Grossman) Due to the depression of 1893, miners had their wages cut and were living in poverty (Grossman). Many miners were dissatisfied and looked to the United Mine Workers for support in raising their standard of living. This proved difficult since employers refused to recognize labor unions for fear of giving them significant control over the industry. In most instances of employee demands before 1902, employers would use government troops or hire immigrants to take the jobs of the strikers (David Kennedy).
...s became even more desperate at the time of the great depression that ultimately led to the great railway strike, in which many workers lost their lives at the hand of the Pennsylvania militia. This act proved to be a major turning point in the evolution of the labor movement in the United States.
The Pullman Strike was a disturbing event in Chicago, Illinois history. It occurred because of the way George Pullman, founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company treated his workers. George Pullman was born in 1831, in upstate New York, he was the son of a carpenter. He learned carpentry himself and moved to Chicago, Illinois in the 1850s. From there, he opened up his own railroad company called the Pullman Palace Car Company and it took off from there. During the Civil war he began creating a new kind of passenger car that would allow passengers to enjoy themselves. It was a new line of luxury railroad cars featuring comfortable seating, restaurants, and improved sleeping accommodations. Because low paid railroad workers, led by Eugene Debs, took a stand against George Pullman by boycotting and
The Underground Railroad despite occurring centuries ago continues to be an “enduring and popular thread in the fabric of America’s national historical memory” as Bright puts it. Throughout history, thousands of slaves managed to escape the clutches of slavery by using a system meant to liberate. In Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, he manages to blend slave narrative and history creating a book that goes beyond literary or historical fiction. Whitehead based his book off a question, “what if the Underground Railroad was a real railroad?” The story follows two runaway slaves, Cora and Caesar, who are pursued by the relentless slave catcher Ridgeway. Their journey on the railroad takes them to new and unfamiliar locations,
George Pullman was not always believed to be a cruel boss. George Pullman started off believing that anyone could be successful if they worked hard enough. But as his business grew, he took this belief too far, furthering his own company by working his employees hard, treating his employees like slaves. There were many factors included in how the Pullman strike started. George Pullman and the company’s treatment of employees, how the town of Pullman, Illinois reacted to their treatment, other strikes that led up to the Pullman employee unhappiness and their reaction, the Pullman Strike.
The Winnipeg General Strike The year of 1919 has been one of the most influential years of strikes