ass brought to the point of exasperation
by unemployment, wage reductions, and misery. That in spite of the
remarkable favorable conjuncture the dramatic appeal failed to shake the
general labor movement out of its chosen groove is proof positive of the
completion of the stabilization process which had been going on since
the early eighties.

The Pullman strike began May 11, 1894, and grew out of a demand of
certain employes in the shops of the Pullman Palace Car Company,
situated at Pullman, Illinois, for a restoration of the wages paid
during the previous year. In March 1894, the Pullman employes had voted
to join the American Railway Union. The American Railway Union was an
organization based on industrial lines, organized in June 1893, by
Eugene V. Debs. Debs, as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen, had watched the failure of many a strike by only one
trade and resigned this office to organize all railway workers in one
organization. The American Railway Union was the result. Between June 9
and June 26 the latter held a convention in Chicago. The Pullman matter
was publicly discussed before and after its committee reported their
interviews with the Pullman Company. On June 21, the delegates under
instructions from their local unions, feeling confident after a victory
over the Great Northern in April, unanimously voted that the members
should stop handling Pullman cars on June 26 unless the Pullman Company
would consent to arbitration.

On June 26 the railway strike began. It was a purely sympathetic strike
as no demands were made. The union found itself pitted against the
General Managers' Association, representing twenty-four roads centering
or terminating in Chicago, which were bound by contracts with the
Pullman Company. The association had been organized in 1886, its main
business being to determine a common policy as to traffic and freight
rates, but incidentally it dealt also with wages. The strike soon spread
over an enormous territory. Many of the members of the brotherhoods
joined in, although their organizations were opposed to the strike. The
lawless element in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity to rob,
burn, and plunder, so that the scenes of the great railway strike of
1877 were now repeated. The damages in losses of property and business
to the country have been estimated at $80,000,000. On July 7, E.V. Debs,
president, and other principal officers of the American Railw