The Pullman Strike Paralysis
As the American Railway Union strike sweeps the nation, railroads are frozen, federal troops are mobilizing, and the movement faces a mounting crisis.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The strike has practically killed all action in the railroad offices, and every road running into Chicago is making large reductions in its force. Nearly all employees in the freight departments have been laid off. In Sacramento, United States Marshal Baldwin was seized by strikers and carried through the streets after failing to force a train containing Pullman cars to move. Meanwhile, in Oakland, Mrs. Jane Stanford, widow of the railroad magnate, received an escort from the strikers themselves, who cleared her path to the ferries as a sign of respect for her late husband's treatment of his workers. Federal troops are expected to arrive in cities across the West to suppress the movement, while Chicago faces an imminent ice famine and food shortages.
“Railroad employees have an unquestioned right to withdraw individually or in a body from the service of the company, but they have no right to interfere with others employed to take their places.”
This 1894 labor conflict, which brought interstate commerce to a complete halt, remains one of the most significant confrontations between corporate power and labor unions in American history. The federal government's intervention—using injunctions and troops—set a precedent for how the state would handle industrial strikes in the century that followed.
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