The People's Songbag Labour Disaster

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 5

The People's Songbag Labour Disaster

[Specially written for "The Press” by

DERRICK ROONEY]

Been on the bum since 94, Last job 1 had was on the Lake

Shore Lost my office in the A R.U., And 1 won’t get it back until nineteen-two. I’m still on the hog train flagging my meals, Ridin’ the brake beams close to the wheels. These lines quoted by the American poet and folk-singer Carl Sandburg recall one of the most disastrous episodes in the history of the Labour movement the Pullman strike of June, 1894. George Mortimer Pullman, Inventor of the sleeping carriage, railway tycoon, parlayed an investment of 10 million dollars into 62 million dollars worth of railway in 25 years by ruthless elimination of competition. To bolster his image as a philanthropist he built for his employees a model town of 4000 acres just south of Chicago. The town housed 12,500 people in 1800 buildings, boasted a fine library, theatre

and church. The company described it as "a town in a word, where all that is ugly and discordant and demoralising is eliminated and all which inspires self-respect is generously provided." But the model town was, in fact, not a philanthropic gesture but a business proposition returning a profit of 6 per cent. Gas, hotels, dairy farm, library and church were all run at a profit; neither houses nor land could be bought; leases could be terminated in 10 days; productions at the theatre were censored; "undesirable” speakers were banned; and even the town’s sewage returned a profit: it was used as manure at a companyowned market garden which sold produce to Chicago. When the 1893 recesssion hit dismissals reduced the town’s population by 4000 and the wages of the remaining workers were cut by up to 40 per cent. But the rents were not cut; and the company continued to deduct rent from wages. . One employee had framed a pay cheque for two cents. In 1894 Eugene V. Debs, leader of the American Railway Union, applied to Pullman for arbitration. Pullman refused; and on June 21 Debs called out his men. The company immediately retaliated by bringing in strike-breakers from Canada, obtaining the appointment of 3400 special deputies on the ground of danger of violence (although Debs had warned his members to run a peaceful campaign) and persuading President Cleveland to send four companies of infantry to Chicago to "protect the mails.” Next the company obtained from the Federal District Court an injunction against the strike: and when Debs ignored it he was imprisoned. Without their leader the strikers gave in: only to find on return to work that unionists had been blacklisted. No A.R.U. member was ever again employed by an American railway. A long-term effect was that Debs turned to socialism and founded the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), whose activities led to the birth of American communism.