The Pullman Strike

The Pullman strike is one of the most important events in US history but is greatly under-reported and generally unknown.

May 11, 1894 saw 90% of the workforce of the Pullman railcars in Chicago fail to show up to work in a strike against a series of events. George Pullman previously cut the wages of his workers by 25% but refused to cut the rents to his company owned town, Pullman, Illinois. This was not received well by the Pullman workers who asked their union, the American Railway Union, reluctantly run by Eugene Debs, to go on strike.

It is easy to blame George Pullman for the strike as he did not see the correlation between wages and rents which we take for granted these days. We also almost instinctually understand that once wages go up - they almost never get reduced. Grievances were brought to George Pullman but he stubbornly refused to budge. The strike then became inevitable and history rightly blames Pullman for the fiasco.

One of the things you learn by reading about this episode is that Eugene Debs was not just one of the best know Socialists in American history but he was also a terrible drinker. He was well known for getting snockered by the second round of drinks as barhopping was considered part of his job at the time.

Hull House was equally famous and a well known hotbed of Socialism but I was unaware that founder Jane Adams was not a Socialist. She was actually against both Socialism and the Pullman Strike. Adams, however, was pragmatically against the top-down method of philanthropy practiced in the US at the time - firmly believing the the people at the bottom who were actually to be helped knew best how the funds could improve their situation. This neither squared well with the muscular Christianity of the day nor the Socialist bent of history today. Have to admit that I agree with the mindset and have become a fan of Adams later in life.

To me this mindset jibes quite well with Donald Rumsfeld’s idea of microloans which almost always get repaid and show a profit. Yet there are no college courses on how to run microloan programs versus how to run government funded non-government non-profits.

Jane Adams seems against the Pullman strike for the simple reason that her sister fell deathly ill in Kenosha, Wisconsin and while Adams was able to make her bedside in time - her sister's husband and her children were not because they were unable to secure a train ride in time. All of the trains were on strike. Reportedly, Adams' sister forgave the strikers on her death bed but Jane Adams never seems to have been able to reach that point. Again - one cannot blame her.

The Pullman strike is one of the most important events in US history but is greatly under-reported and generally unknown.

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