ay Union
were indicted, arrested, and held under $10,000 bail. On July 13 they
were charged with contempt of the United States Court in disobeying an
injunction which enjoined them, among other things, from compelling or
inducing by threats railway employes to strike. The strike had already
been weakening for some days. On July 12, at the request of the American
Railway Union, about twenty-five of the executive officers of national
and international labor unions affiliated with the American Federation
of Labor met in conference in Chicago to discuss the situation. Debs
appeared and urged a general strike by all labor organizations. But the
conference decided that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the
interests of labor to extend the strike any further than it had already
gone," and advised the strikers to return to work. On July 13, the
American Railway Union, through the Mayor of Chicago, offered the
General Managers' Association to declare the strike off, provided the
men should be restored to their former positions without prejudice,
except in cases where they had been convicted of crime. But the
Association refused to deal with the union. The strike was already
virtually beaten by the combined moral effect of the indictment of the
leaders and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops, which
President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest of Governor Altgeld of
Illinois.

The labor organizations were taught two important lessons. First, that
nothing can be gained through revolutionary striking, for the government
was sufficiently strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers
had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.[28]

Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly falling labor market
and court prosecutions were powerful allies of those socialistic and
radical leaders inside the Federation who aspired to convert it from a
mere economic organization into an economic-political one and make it
embark upon the sea of independent politics.

The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it submitted to the
consideration of affiliated unions a "political programme." The preamble
to the "programme" recited that the English trade unions had recently
launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their economic
action." The eleven planks of the program demanded: compulsory
education; the right of popular initiative in legislation; a legal
eight-hour work-day; governmental inspection of mi