The Pullman Strike of June 26, 1894 was the first national strike in the history of the USA.
Here again over financing of the railroads caused insecurity in the markets. As a result the railroad companies began to reduce wages.
The first to cut wages was the Pullman Palace Car Company. Many of the workers were members of the American Railway Union. Back in the day, and at 'first breath' of an economic downturn for workers, there was strong loyalty that had built among union labor.
The owner of Pullman refused to speak to the workers. The union launched a boycott. Within four days, 125,000 workers from 29 railroads had quit.
There was a racial element that entered the game when African Americans were recruited to replace the union members.
Of course, violence followed and there was mayhem at most union meetings.
President Grover Cleveland would send in US Marshals and 12,000 US Army troops since it interfered with mail delivery.
Clarence Darrow entered the scene as one of the first attorney to defy the USA government. He eventually gets conspiracy charges dropped against the union leader and he only serves six months for violating a court injunction.
So it was never easy to be a union leader. They have a long history of being pursued by the federal government in one method or another. And today, with companies being international corporations with large sums of income on the line on a daily basis, the unions are always receiving injunctions for their strikes to send them back to work.
Modern day unionism is more or less watered down in its ability to successfully conduct itself with strikes and opposition of unfair labor practices that leads to downsizing and outsourcing. Modern Day USA has sincerely turned its back on laborers and sold out to Wall Street.
Today, when the Obama Administration sought to infuse the American economy with new labor jobs, there were dearly few manufacturing plants to produce trains, wind turbines and solar panels for the new energy economy. Luckily, we have had some willing Governors rush to the forefront of 'seizing the moment' and recruited manufacturing into the USA. Let's hope the trend continues in strongly Democratic states where American labor is still valued as the best in the world.
Oh, yeah, the Pullman strike.
Well, he was "W"rong. He was capitalizing on every aspect of his employees lives. The Illinois Supreme Court would divest Pullman of his 'company town' and it was annexed by Chicago. It was declared Un-American.
